of gold, part of it shall be expended for a service of plate, or most
delicate porcelain, to be wrought into the shapes of summer-squashes
gathered from vines which I will plant with my own hands. As dishes
for containing vegetables, they would be peculiarly appropriate.

But not merely the squeamish love of the beautiful was gratified by my
toil in the kitchen-garden. There was a hearty enjoyment, likewise,
in observing the growth of the crook-necked winter-squashes from the
first little bulb, with the withered blossom adhering to it, until
they lay strewn upon the soil, big, round fellows, hiding their heads
beneath the leaves, but turning up their great yellow rotundities to
the noontide sun. Gazing at them, I felt that by my agency something
worth living for had been done. A new substance was born into the
world. They were real and tangible existences, which the mind could
seize hold of and rejoice in. A cabbage, too,--especially the early
Dutch cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circumference, until its
ambitious heart often bursts asunder,--is a matter to be proud of when
we can claim a share with the earth and sky in producing it. But,
after all, the hugest pleasure is reserved until these vegetable
children of ours are smoking on the table, and we, like Saturn, make a
meal of them.

What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden,
the reader begins to despair of finding his way back into the Old
Manse. But, in agreeable weather, it is the truest hospitality to keep
him out of doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my habitation
till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me beneath its roof.
There could not be a more sombre aspect of external nature than as
then seen from the windows of my study. The great willow-tree had
caught and retained among its leaves a whole cataract of water, to be