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176 And, indeed, such an idea is in the main correct; but, a few minutes’ thought will reveal to our minds the various toilsome steps that must be surmounted before the pinnacle of success can be gained. What method, tact and skill must be required to drill so large a number of subordinates, and assign to each their several duties about the fruits and flowers! What care and thought must be bestowed ere those fruits and flowers can come to perfection! How many sleepless toilsome nights must be passed during the wintry frosts and snows, when an hour’s relaxation of vigilance, a single disobedience of orders, or a slight variation in the height of the thermometer, may undo the daily toil of many months. All these, and many other circumstances, combine to render the post of head-gardener at a large establishment, although in many respects an enviable and delightful situation, yet one that is fraught with much care and anxiety, and with great responsibilities. Well did the poet Cowper advise the wealthy to “grudge not the cost” of their gardens; for, said he,

Ye little know the care,

The vigilance, the labour, and the skill

That day and night are exercised, and hang

Upon the ticklish balance of suspense.

Ten thousand dangers lie in wait to thwart

The process. Heat and cold, and wind, and steam,

Moisture and drought, mice, worms, and swarming flies,

Minute as dust, and numberless, oft work

Dire disappointment, that admits no cure,

And which no care can obviate.

In short, the post of a head-gardener is much the same as any other office where work and skill and responsibility are required; and there are thorns thickly set about the roses of his life, no less than about those that make his gardens so gay. Yet his lot has much in it that begets healthy contentment and innocent thoughts; and his daily occupations amid the lovely creations of God’s hand may aptly suggest to him the reflection contained in that verse of Montgomery,

If God has made this world so fair,

Where sin and death abound,

How beautiful beyond compare

Will Paradise be found!

2em

Saturday, the 8th of June, 1861, in the course of a year’s tour through the States, I found myself at St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, and at the head of regular steamboat navigation on the Mississippi. I had not been there long before my attention was drawn to the following advertisement in a St. Paul paper:

As the excursion would be to me a novel one, I decided on joining it. On the Monday following I was fortunate enough to meet with a fellow-countryman, whom I will call Brown, who, like myself, was travelling through the country for pleasure, and with whom I had previously made acquaintance in the South. He agreed to go with me, and accordingly, after securing a state-room, and spending the intervening week very pleasantly in fishing-expeditions to some of the neighbouring lakes, we went on board the Frank Steele, the larger of the two boats advertised, about four o’clock in the afternoon of the 17th.

The Frank Steele, though rather small of its kind, was a type of that peculiar build of steamers which navigates the Mississippi and its tributaries—a sort of house-boat in stories—for everything was above deck. There was the deck itself, or ground-floor, for instance, not more than some three feet above the water, on which the machinery was placed, and on this also was stowed away fuel (which was used in large quantities, and renewed from time to time on the voyage), as well as freight, which forms at least as important a branch of the ordinary business of the river-steamers as the passenger-traffic. Above this the first floor was mainly occupied by the saloon, reaching nearly from stem to stern, painted white, and lined on each side with a row of state-rooms. Each room was fitted with two berths and opened by one of two doors into the saloon, and by the other into the “guard,” a passage which stretched round the saloon and formed a promenade. The after-end of the saloon was appropriated to the ladies, and could be shut off from the rest by folding-doors, at pleasure. Over this lay the officers’ quarters, which covered a much smaller area, leaving around them abundant space from which to enjoy a good look-out on the scenery. The whole was crowned with a sort of square box, in which the helmsman, or “wheelsman,” as he is termed, sat at the wheel. The draught of water of a boat of this kind is so light as to enable her to run with safety to within a few feet of the bank, and so to obviate the necessity of anything in the shape of a pier at the landings; when the vessel is lightly laden, it is often not more than twenty-six inches. Americans are apt to speak of these vessels as “floating palaces,” but with the exception of some in the South, in which higher fares are charged and proportionably better treatment given, they are nothing of the kind. You are provided in them, it is true, with three meat meals a day, but the food is greasy and badly cooked, and you are invariably placed in the dilemma of being obliged to bolt your dinner (with the rest) in a quarter of an hour, or leave the table with an appetite. Another drawback exists in the fact that the state-rooms are extremely small, and are unprovided with any washing-apparatus whatever. The passenger is dependent for his morning’s ablutions on waiting his turn for a damp rub at one of three basins in