That harmony was the animating
as well as sustaining power of my horticultural enterprise. Had there
been wrangling, opposition, or ridicule, it is probable that I should
never have ventured on the planting of a single strawberry. Success,
situated as I was, was dependent on united effort, the cooeperation of
all. This cooeperation of the entire family must be still more necessary
in agricultural undertakings on a large scale. A wife, taken reluctantly
from the city to a farm, with no taste for rural life, no love of
flowers, no fondness for the garden, no appreciation of the mysteries of
seed-time and harvest, no sensibility to fields of clover, to green
meadows, to the grateful silence of the woods, or to the voices of
birds, and who pines for the unforgotten charms of city life, may mar
the otherwise assured happiness of the household. One refractory inmate
in ours would have been especially calamitous.
The floral world is pervaded with miraculous sympathies. Another spring
had opened on our garden, and flower after flower came out into gorgeous
bloom.
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