My neighbour on the left was out and about by
four. With the earliest light of day, little columns of
smoke rose along our street from the kitchen ranges where
our wives were making coffee for us before the servants
got up. By six o'clock the street was alive and busy with
friendly salutations. The milkman seemed a late comer,
a poor, sluggish fellow who failed to appreciate the
early hours of the day. A man, we found, might live
through quite a little Iliad of adventure before going
to his nine o'clock office.
"How will you possibly get time to put in a garden?" I
asked of one of my neighbours during this glad period of
early spring before I left for the country. "Time!" he
exclaimed. "Why, my dear fellow, I don't have to be down
at the warehouse till eight-thirty."
Later in the summer I saw the wreck of his garden, choked
with weeds. "Your garden," I said, "is in poor shape."
"Garden!" he said indignantly. "How on earth can I find
time for a garden? Do you realize that I have to be down
at the warehouse at eight-thirty?"
When I look back to our bright beginnings our failure
seems hard indeed to understand. It is only when I survey
the whole garden movement in melancholy retrospect that
I am able to see some of the reasons for it.
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