A very good specimen of that curious, new-world kind of wit--American humour; and also full of the truest sense of natural beauty and of gardening delights.
Mr.Warner is not complimentary to woman's work in the garden, though he displays all the graceful deference of his countrymen to the weaker sex.

In the charming dedication to his wife, whilst desiring "to acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labour," he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not _grub_ so energetically as we do.

Certainly, with us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical gardeners, the master of the house caring chiefly for a good general effect, with tidy walks and grassplots, and displaying less of that almost maternal solicitude which does bring flowers to perfection.
I have sometimes thought that it would be a good division of labour in a Little Garden, if, where Joan coddles the roses and rears the seedlings, Darby would devote some of his leisure to the walks and grassplots.
Few things in one's garden are pleasanter to one's own eye, or gain more admiration from others, than well-kept turf.

Green grass is one of the charms of the British Isles, which are emerald isles throughout, though Ireland is so _par excellence_.

It is so much a matter of course to us that we hardly realize this till we hear or read what foreigners say about it, and also our own American and colonial cousins.