Page:Letters of Life.djvu/399

Rh insoluble, clay soil, produce a vegetable of greater freshness than can be procured of the grocers. Once I was inspired with the lofty ambition to be a producer of potatoes. A small plot of ground in the rear of my offices was properly prepared and stocked with the most approved kinds of the pomme de terre. I watched their green heads protruding through the mould, and their healthful efflorescence, as Diocletian did his cabbages. Suddenly the withering of the green tops seemed to betoken that the bulb was perfected, and I directed the test of the spade to be applied. Lo! every hill had been rifled, their surface dexterously smoothed, and the rootless vines set out again. Only a few luckless tubers remained, to show us the excellence of what we had lost. The busy personage who had toiled so acquisitively while we slept, was not even so obliging as his prototype, to sow tares.

You should see by what a world of grape-vines I am encompassed. They climb upon my piazzas, draw a cordon around the walls, besiege every loophole, look in at the chamber windows, and leap from my summer-house to the surrounding boughs, hanging their clusters in the air. I have striven to restrain the last-named class of explorers, and woven them perseveringly in with the lattice-work, but they have an irresistible pioneer spirit. Were the prolific impulses of my vines as strong as their emigrating ones, I might searcelyscarcely [sic]