An amusing, perhaps a rather grave, matter passed under my observation yesterday. The afternoon was clear and mild and I had taken my work out into the garden. From where I sat I could see Hodge at work with his spade some distance away. Quite unconsciously, I suppose, I lifted my eyes at intervals to look toward him, for by degrees I became aware that Hodge at intervals was looking toward me. I noticed that he was red in the face, which is always a sign of his anger; apparently he wavered as to whether he should or should not do a debatable thing. Finally lifting his spade high and bringing it down with such force that he sent it deep into the mould where it stood upright, he started toward me. You know how, as he approaches anyone, he loosens his cap from his forehead and scrapes the back of his neck with the back of his thumb. As he stood before me he did this now. Then he made the following announcement in the voice of an aggrieved bully: "The _Scolopendium vulgare_ put up two new shoots after he went away, mum. Bishop's crooks he calls 'em, mum." I replied that I was glad to hear the ferns were thrifty. He, jerking his thumb toward the fern bank, added still more resentfully: "The _Adiantum nigrum_ put up some, mum." I replied that I should announce to you the good news. Plainly this was not what he had come to tell me, for he stood embarrassed but not budging, his eyes blazing with a kind of stupid fury. At last he brought out his trouble. It seems that one day last week a hamper of ferns arrived for you from New York, with only the names of the shippers, charges prepaid. I was not at home, having that day gone to the Vicar's with some marmalade; so Hodge took it upon himself to receive the hamper. By his confession he unwrapped the package and discovering the contents to be a collection of fern-roots, with the list of the Latin names attached, he re-wrapped them and re-shipped them to the forwarding agents--charges to be collected in New York. This is now Hodge's plight: he is uncertain whether the plants were some you had ordered, or were a gift to you from some friend, or merely a gratuitous advertisement by an American nurseryman. Whether yours or another's, of much value to you or none, he resolved that they should not enter the garden. There was no place for them in the garden without there being a place for their Latin names in his head, and his head would hold no more. At least his temper is the same that has incited all English rebellion: human nature need not stand for it!