Our fruit was as plentiful as our vegetables,--indeed we might have sold the surplus for many dollars; but we soon found that to do so was to lose _caste_ in the neighborhood. One piece of extravagance we were guilty of the first winter and spring we passed at A. The gardener had a little fire in the grapery during the severe weather, because he had placed some plants in it. We were told we could continue it till the grapes ripened for a "mere nothing." Now "mere nothings" mount up to a "considerable something." The coal and coke consumed before they were ripe cost $20. It is true we had them in July instead of September, but we should have liked them quite as well in that month. It was a bad grape year, too,--at least with us. I don't think we cut more than twenty pounds weight. Hothouse grapes are not dear at $1 the pound; but we should have had them equally good by waiting two months later, when they would have cost us nothing. Had we purchased the produce we received from our garden during the year, it would have been worth two guineas weekly. Our peaches, apricots, and nectarines, were abundant, and very fine. We had two splendid walnut-trees, and a mulberry-tree of immense size, which was an object of special abhorrence to "nurse," as for more than two months in the summer the children's frocks, pinners, &c., were dyed with the juice of the fruit. They could hardly pass near it in the season without some of the ripe berries falling on their heads, and it was hardly possible to prevent them escaping from her to pick them up. Mulberry-pudding made its appearance often on the nursery-table, and jars of mulberry-jam were provided to secure the same dainty through the winter. The luxury of a good garden can hardly be appreciated till you have been in possession of one, more especially where there are many children. The way we used to preserve currants, gooseberries, plums, damsons, and, indeed, almost every description of fruit, was this: The wide-mouth bottles which are sold for the purpose were filled with fruit, six ounces of powdered loaf-sugar was shaken in among it; the bottles were then tied down as closely as possible with bladder, and placed up to the neck in a copper, or large saucepan, of cold water, which was allowed to come slowly to the boil. They remained in it till the water was quite cold, when they were taken from the water and wiped quite dry. Before placing them in the store-room the bottle was turned upside down, in order to see that they were perfectly air-tight, for on this depends the fruit keeping good. The fruit will sink down to about the middle of the bottle, and we once tried to fill them up with some from another, but opening them admitted the air, and the contents did not keep well. If properly done, they will be good at the end of a year.