Some Fruit-Weather Talk - Fruit Soups - Don't Keep Off The Grass - Lady Schnipticket And The Old Sheep-Pasture Grass - An Education In Grass.

IN reaching after rare fruits that are not as good, and temperance drinks that are not as wholesome as apples and apple-juice might he, we have forgotten how to grow and preserve the King of Fruits in plenty all the year through, as our fathers did." This was Mrs. Tarryer's apologetic remark to several of her guests as she loosened the halyards of a fine hunch of un-bruised bananas than hung high in the warm hall, and lowered away until she could select with her own hands the fragrant and dead-ripe specimens for lunch.

That hot day, or the very next one, in June, she served an iced fruit soup, of the color of red wine, floating with sliced bananas and strawberries. It is of no use to ask how that soup was made, for she never has fruit soups twice alike, but just makes them of what ripe fruits she can get, with keen eyes and a scientific imagination for colors and tastes. All of them are marvelously delightful and delicious in hot weather. If the day turns suddenly cool, by dinner-time, she will not allow her ices to be frustrated : cleft pine logs blaze high upon the andirons till the heat is quite tropical. Even Parson Camperdown, who is likely to be the chilliest of the party, with his feet under a little table by the lire, gets enough of it, and finds the iced fruit soup of the color of red wine a most warming thing to begin dinner.

Nobody disputed Mrs. Tarryer's proposition, and the conversation did not turn upon apple orchards at that time, though Mrs. Tarryer and every one who thinks about it, knows there is more money in strictly fine apple-culture (and more ignorance alas!) than in any other branch of pomology.

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Later in the evening, when Mrs. Camperdown sat in the parson's old gig, preliminary to the home-going, and his mare was allowed to refresh herself with the lush grass of the smooth door-yard - greatly to Lady Schnipticket's astonishment, because Mrs. Tarryer did not object to it - the question of domestic grass was raised. Lady Schnip-ticket got her money in the railway line, and is not a very frequent visitor at our house, though the talk and fare here always seems to suit some dormant old elements in her sophisticated composition. She remonstrated with Parson Camperdown for allowing his horse and carriage to trample and gnaw the lawn so.

"Won't it pull and destroy all the grass?" she asked.

The parson, seeing his good wife, who is a droll story-teller, surrounded by some of the younger members of the party, stopped to defend himself, which he was well able to do from long familiarity with Mrs. Tarryer's views upon the subject. So Lady Schnipticket listened with open mouth to the parson's elucidation of the idea that it made turf robust and durable to trample on it occasionally. It would take a whole number of the Garden to report that conversation between the most polite of gentlemen and the most obtuse of ladies, and we old smokers only heard it from the end of the broad veranda, where the shade of sipho was darkest. But finally the parson mustered up courage enough to assert that if we would spend as much in teaching the people to know grass as we spend in signs to "Keep off the grass " (Lady Schnipticket's place is covered with those staring village obscenities), it would be vastly better for grass everywhere. And he succeeded in reminding the railway lady of the fine short turf of the old sheep-pasture of her childhood, for she remembered how a stile from the walled-in garden of her early New England home used to let her go romping down among shaded green slopes, past grey, mossy and vine-clad ledges with her school-mates, and she grew quite pensive and even beautiful and girlish for a moment in the light of the rising moon filtering through the young leaves full upon her.

Then the parson got in his amusing story about the absurd wriggling of lamb's tails while drawing their needful sustenance, kneeling at maternal founts; said tails being stiff close to their bodies, but flaccid for the most part at their ends - and how Brown, his best vestryman, secured a new bell for the church by likening the sound of the cracked old one to a "lamb's tail in an old hat," which was published in the local newspaper; so that, in the general good humor, many outsiders contributed.

These things, or their collaterals, visibly affected Lady Schnipticket, and I thought, for a moment, that Parson Camperdown would have drawn his scheme on her for getting the church horse-sheds shingled and having the holes, pawed by fly-bitten horses for centuries, nicely filled with solid clay gravel, but he didn't. Perhaps he never thought of it! Mrs. Tarryer has taught him better. She likes all sorts of people around her in amity, but will have none of them preying upon each other on our premises. The late Col. Schnipticket died suddenly, far west, with a hole in his hat and very much regretted, in Jay Cooke's time. Parson Camperdown was considered too enthusiastic over some of the Colonel's grand railway schemes for the purses of several of his parishioners who could ill afford to lose money. There was a mild corrective meaning in Mrs. Tarryer's giving him " Lily among Thorns " - a new version of Solomon's song - for his last Christmas present. In it are plaintive and touching references to sheep, etc.

These fast colors were at the bottom of this grass conversation, and give us a glimpse of how the world moves.

Lady Schnipticket is alert in money-matters, and well able to take care of herself, so long as affairs continue in a shape she is used to, just like any one else. Men and women spring and fall like grass when circumstances change. " Now do tell us, Mr. Camperdown," she asked, sweetly, "how to bring that old sheep-pasture turf back again ? I really want to know".

"By studying grass, sheep and the land," returned the parson, promptly. He knew he was correct, because he had often heard Mrs. Tarryer say so.

"Can't you give us a few details ?" inquired the lady, politely. But by that time Mrs. Camperdown had told all her fresh stories to the young people, the mare had grass enough, the wind blew cooler and the parson heard a voice he knew he must obey. Indeed, it was time to go home.

We two or three old smokers who had not been listening in particular, knew Lady Schnipticket had asked a question - How to get the old sheep-pasture turf back again ? - which is fit to occupy the best minds of this generation. Our Saratoga philosophers will have it up within a year or two. A nation cannot go back on a forty years "progress" in a moment. Just as the parson said - quoting from Mrs. Tarryer - there must be study of grass, sheep and the land, which is a great deal poorer than it used to be. Sheep are farther off - wilder, and the fences are down. Grass ? Who looks at that but to scrape enough of it ?

The easiest way to get grass so we can look straight at it - and this is the first step towards sheep-pasture sward - is to take the clean turf that suits our fancy by its appearance and behavior, and cut it into inch pieces and plant it in some such way as this in a garden:

Let us play those plats are four feet square, though any other form will do as well. The spaces between the plats may be two feet and the alleys beside each row of plats four feet. In cutting the sward into inch bits, all mixtures, of whatever kind, will be excluded, and the weeding will be thorough, with the design of growing each variety tested in pure cultures into a solid sward of itself alone.

Whoever attempts this very fascinating employment on the smallest scale, as of an inch bit of each variety under trial, cannot fail to learn much about grass and the land in a few months. In the words of one who has tried it, "It is as good as a liberal education." Possibly we may hear Lady Schnipticket talking about the sheep-business for some future letter. She will need to make up her mind what kind of sheep she likes to eat and wear the wool of best, and which will most remind her of her young and innocent days.