An unpleasant suspicion crossed my mind that perhaps it would have been better if some of these things had been done to my hand, and that possibly I was not exactly the man to do them in the best way; but a second perusal of “Ten Acres Enough” was enough for me, and these absurd doubts were banished forever. If an uneducated mechanic could leave Philadelphia, rescue a decaying farm, and make it splendidly remunerative, why could not an educated lawyer from New York convert an uninjured farm into the eighth or ninth--we Americans have added a few to them--wonder of the world?
The affair was as simple as could be. With a class-book of botany, a recipe from Professor Mapes, a few cuttings of some wonderful new berry--of which, doubtless, there were plenty, and Bridgman’s “Gardener’s Assistant,” the result was certain. It was merely a question of seeds, weeds, and manure--the first and last to be encouraged, and the other to be eradicated.
After all, what is the wonderful science in farming? You put a seed in the ground, and it comes up--that is, if it does come up--either a pea or a bean, a carrot or a turnip, and, with your best skill and greatest learning, you can not plant a pea and induce it to come up a bean, or convert a carrot into a turnip. As for planting, any fool can do that, and as for making it grow, the wisest man in the land can not effect it. These and a few other similar arguments were entirely conclusive, and soon visions of the accomplished fact engrossed my mind.
I should have a neat, modest, small, but cosy little house; square, for economy’s sake, but surrounded on all sides by a deep piazza; the garden should be filled with delicious vegetables, fruits, and berries, the earliest and best of their kinds; there should be a magnificent bed of asparagus--that king of the kitchen garden--a dozen long rows of strawberries, with fruit as luscious as a young girl’s lips; Bartlett pears, early peas, peaches and cream--the latter only indirectly vegetable--cauliflowers, tomatoes, mushrooms, lettuce--every thing, in fact, that a gentleman eats when he can get it, and nothing that he eschews when he can do no better. The residue of the farm was to be partly orchard and partly market garden, and this was to supply the family during the winter and pay the expenses of the household.