Our troubles began as soon as the bits of sod were planted. Public curiosity was roused at once. Three local newspapers kept standing head-lines and sent reporters around twice a week to see what that grass was doing. Mrs. Camperdown, who was kind and cheerful, even in the darkest period, advised the Parson to put up a bulletin daily on the street opposite their entrance ; bets were made at two or three wet groceries that "what the Parson has planted is twitch, or a kind of a twitch," and the academy boys had a rollicking song - nine abreast - about the "Camperdown gra-a-a-ass ;" that, as I have hinted before, helped make Mrs. Tar-ryer's nights wakeful.

There was a week or ten days in June when it certainly looked as if that rampant creeping agrostis, impelled by frequent rains and too much soluble fertility, would cross the drive, scale the verandah and swamp the house. Mrs. Tarryer laughed easily, when she found that Dingball had used a bag of fertilizer instead of the half-bushel she had told him, and stopped the wild charge of the agrostis with a pair of shears.

This was the same day that Lady Schnipticket and Mrs. Tarryer met at the Camperdown mansion and had a conversation, the particulars of which have not fully transpired before this writing.

Mrs. Tarryer is no tattler, but she knows how to defend herself. After Parson Camperdown had told a four-horse load of Grangers who drove in from a pic-nic - repeating three times over in his loudest tone that "The grass is probably FIORIN !" - Lady Schnipticket undertook to read Mrs. Tarryer a lecture implying that she was too forward in introducing new species of plants in other people's grounds and forcing them into notoriety before the public in the most embarassing manner. *

Where Lady Schnipticket's opinions came from was known perfectly well to Mrs. Tarryer. Her foctotum was a Scotchman by the name of Mc-Tavish. He made his first appearance in Tarry-town with Col. Schnipticket's body, and naturally remained after the funeral and made himself generally useful, as Scotchmen are abundantly capable of doing. McTavish knew more about the stable, than the garden, and relieved Lady Schnipticket from horse-trading entirely, so that she generally had teams, double and single, that would be a credit to any lady. He had not been long in Lady Schnipticket's service, however, before there was talk about him and one of her maids, whose parents were well known to and appealed to Mrs. Tarryer; but the Scotchman married the girl and the affair blew over, though McTavish did not forget it and felt constrained - so it was said - by what he called "petticoat government." He and Dingball, and several other weedy gardeners in our vicinity, thought now was their time to make a stand.

You can well imagine that Mrs. Tarryer was not the woman to accept any of that Scotchman's mischief at second-hand through Lady Schnipticket. After hearing the lecture aforesaid, attentively, she shifted the shears into her other hand and led the dowager knee-deep into that tall grass and showed her how thoroughly it was covering the ground and springing up thick and fine as hair at the bottom, so that no weeds could live in it.

"Now my dear Mrs. Schnipticket, don't let the small malices of these gardeners make any difficulty between you and me ! This grass is coming out all right, and will be lovely in the end. You don't know that either I or my boys and girls, without seeming to do it, have had to keep the weeds out of this grass ourselves. Parson Camperdown's man and your McTavish - I believe he is at the bottom of all the trouble - determined this grass should not succeed, and I have determined it shall !"

*Mr. Tarryer is wrong in his history, but he may mean some other Roman matron. - Ed.

Lady Schnipticket opened her eyes, then, as though she had just thought of something and insisted that Mrs. Tarryer should step into her carriage. There, the dowager was quite confidential. "I told McTavish the other day," she went on, "that he might as well trade with a Smith, a Brown or a Jones, sometimes, as with the eternal" Mc's" I am constantly drawing checks for. And do look at this piece of his impudence ! It was mixed in with a lot of papers he handed me :"

"Mi dere Sandy yule haf to tek the sorel mare back "she can't step with the gra nor with dandy and the ole "woman ses she wont do at all "yours M'Tavish".

"I'll'old woman' him, you'll see ! He's been raking all manner of grass-seed bills into my weedy lawn - the stupid ! - these twenty years, the same as Parson Camperdown has, without minding the annual grasses that are nothing but weeds. Now, my dear - that McTavish - ' old woman ' indeed ! - shall manage my grass precisely as you say, or pack !"

After relating this interview - not much less in volume than a number of the Garden - Mrs. Tarryer admitted that Lady Schnipticket said one thing in her lecture that is worth repeating here : "The experiment stations ought to go into this kind of grass-work instead of leaving the people at the mercy of their ignorant gardeners and the seedtrade, who of course don't know any better".

Parson Camperdown's lawn is greener than an emerald with the one pure grass, now, and McTavish has every weedy spot on the Schnipticket grounds under half-summer fallow, in readiness for " dotted lawn" planting or pure seeding this fall or next spring. The weedy sod is first coated with fine clay loam and then carefully turned under, with a fertilizer, to receive a light dust of clay with a fertilizer on top. He makes the most obsequious of bows to Mrs. Tarryer, and the last boy-baby was baptized "Tarryer-McTavish," in genuine Scotch thrift. Lady Schnipticket says this sod-business shall be worked into our grass-science if she has to hire a lot of botanists and pay their board at Saratoga next summer to get it done !

[NOTE BY MR. TARRYER].

One of the publishers telegraphs to know if the allusions to "the Scotchman" cannot be shaded, in fear of giving offence to a worthy nationality ? Mrs. Tarryer declines to shade anything except her Poa trivialis late peas and pansies. She prefers to let the sun in. She says "tell him the Tarryers were Welsh, that I was born three parts Scotch, and that this firm claims the right to criticise certain varieties of Scotchmen or any other race that works mischief in the garden. It's all in the family." Mrs. Tarryer adores the chivalrous and self-sacrificing Scottish character. She considers the way M'Alpine places his new system of "How to Know Grass by its Leaves," as a safe step for botanists to get to the ground, and the most heroic act since Raleigh flung his cloak in the mud for Queen Bess to travel on. "Now," she says, "if some Scotsman will hurry up the science of How to Know Grass by its Roots, we may all be happy in our grass-gardens.'" from being a "thing of beauty" be also a lasting joy, so much the better. The broadest field for ingenuity in this line is to be found in the designing of original souvenirs. These will be cherished, for they are mute reminders of the happy occasion.

They are preserved with other mementos having fond associations.