My weekly earnings with the needle, while a girl, never reached a sum more than enough to board and clothe me. But I felt proud of being able to accomplish even what I did. When any little sum for recreation was wanted, it was cheerfully handed out to me, but our recreations were rare and cheap, for we selected those which were moderate and homely. My father taught me to work in the garden; and there I spent many odd hours in hoeing among the vegetables and flowers, clearing the beds of weeds, and raking the ground smooth and even. This employment was beneficial to health and appetite, and afforded an excellent opportunity for reflection. He taught me all the botanical names that he had picked up from the gentlemen for whom he worked, having acquired an amusing fondness for remembering and repeating them. I learned them all, because he desired me to do so, and because I saw it gratified him for me to take an interest in such things. I do not think this kind of knowledge did him much good; for he was unable to give reasons when I inquired for them. But for the use of these sonorous designations for common things was a sort of conversational hobby with him. I cannot say that he was unduly proud of the little draughts of learning he had thus taken at the neighboring fountains, but rather that it became a sort of passion with him, yet regulated by a sincere desire to impart to his children all the knowledge he had himself acquired. There was great merriment among us when he first began to use some of these hard botanical names. He did so with the utmost gravity of countenance, which only increased our amusement. I remember one summer evening he told Fred, on leaving the supper-table, to go out and pull up a _Phytolacca_ that was going to seed just over the garden-fence. Fred stopped in amazement at hearing so strange a word; and I confess that it bewildered even me. Then followed the very explanation which father had intended to give. He told us it was a poke-bush. "Oh," said Fred, with a broad laugh, "is that all?" But the word was forthwith written down, so as to impress it on our memories, and none of us have yet forgotten it. It was singular, moreover, how the imitative faculty gained strength among us. We children acquired the habit of speaking of all our garden-plants by such outlandish names as father then taught us,--not seriously, of course, but as a capital piece of fun. We knew no more of relations and affinities than he, and so used these names much as parrots repeat the chance phrases they sometimes learn; still, the faint glimmerings of knowledge thus early shed upon our minds came back to us in after life, and, explained and illustrated by study and observation, now serve as positive lights to the understanding.