that this occurred at an early stage of my household experience, when I
placed a trustful reliance in advertisements. I have since learned
that the most truthful people are apt to indulge a slight vein of
exaggeration in describing their own possessions, as though the mere
circumstance of going into print were an excuse for a certain kind of
mendacity. But I did not fully awaken to this fact until a much later
period, when, in answering an advertisement which described a highly
advantageous tenement, I was referred to the house I then occupied, and
from which a thousand inconveniences were impelling me to move.
The "fine garden" alluded to was not large, but contained several
peculiarly shaped flower-beds. I was at first struck with the singular
resemblance which they bore to the mutton-chops that are usually brought
on the table at hotels and restaurants,--a resemblance the more striking
from the sprigs of parsley which they produced freely. One plat in
particular reminded me, not unpleasantly, of a peculiar cake, known
to my boyhood as "a bolivar." The owner of the property, however, who
seemed to be a man of original aesthetic ideas, had banked up one of
these beds with bright-colored sea-shells, so that in rainy weather
it suggested an aquarium, and offered the elements of botanical and
conchological study in pleasing juxtaposition. I have since thought
that the fish-geraniums, which it also bore to a surprising extent, were
introduced originally from some such idea of consistency. But it was
very pleasant, after dinner, to ramble up and down the gravelly paths
(whose occasional boulders reminded me of the dry bed of a somewhat
circuitous mining stream), smoking a cigar, or inhaling the rich aroma
of fennel, or occasionally stopping to pluck one of the hollyhocks with
which the garden abounded. The prolific qualities of this plant alarmed
us greatly, for although, in the first transport of enthusiasm, my wife
planted several different kinds of flower-seeds, nothing ever came up
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