ideas from writers on the subject. I told him that I had had no time
to read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except
"Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and that
I had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, except
that I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on this
line if"--The President stopped me abruptly, and said it was
unnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.
Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it. Sometimes, he
said, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it in
resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it dropped
jocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for an
office, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would get
to running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-r
sings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.
He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on his
brain for years.

The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,
that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position of
head gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics. I
told him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign
appointment. I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to
take an appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any home
office, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless
for me to take one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled,
and said he would see what could be done for me. I did not change
the subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.

The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);
but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said it