first of these three went melancholy mad at the end of a year; the
second was love-sick, and threw down his tools and gave up his situation
to wander after the departed siren who had turned his head; the third,
when I inquired how it was that the things he had sown never by any
chance came up, scratched his head, and as this is a sure sign of
ineptitude, I sent him away.

Then I sat down and thought. I had been here two years and worked hard,
through these men, at the garden; I had done my best to learn all I
could and make it beautiful; I had refused to have more than an inferior
gardener because of his supposed more perfect obedience, and one
assistant, because of my desire to enjoy the garden undisturbed; I had
studied diligently all the gardening books I could lay hands on; I was
under the impression that I am an ordinarily intelligent person, and
that if an ordinarily intelligent person devotes his whole time to
studying a subject he loves, success is very probable; and yet at the
end of two years what was my garden like? The failures of the first two
summers had been regarded with philosophy; but that third summer I used
to go into it sometimes and cry.

As far as I was concerned I had really learned a little, and knew what
to buy, and had fairly correct notions as to when and in what soil to
sow and plant what I had bought; but of what use is it to buy good seeds
and plants and bulbs if you are forced to hand them over to a gardener
who listens with ill-concealed impatience to the careful directions you
give him, says Jawohl a great many times, and then goes off and puts
them in in the way he has always done, which is invariably the wrong
way? My hands were tied because of the unfortunate circumstance of sex,
or I would gladly have changed places with him and requested him to do
the talking while I did the planting, and as he probably would not have