One of my first discoveries (after the simplest rudiments of the art I essayed to practise) was that of all topics on the lips of men the garden is the most conversable, the most fraternal. Hitherto, observation had led me to suppose children and rheumatism the most universal of interests. Having neither myself, I have been cut off from that fluent intercourse upon first steps and first words, adenoids, preventive dentistry, potatoes carried in the pocket, baths of hot brine, and the proportion of protein in the diet, which makes strangers or friends akin. There was always the weather; but--unless one has a garden, as sensitive as a poet to every nuance of sun or atmosphere--talk of the weather is a mere subterfuge, a symbol of our inarticulateness and awkward shyness masking our human yearning to know our fellows and to wish them well. The garden, as a subject of discourse, combines all the pretext offered by the weather to hint our good will without violating our shyness; all the diversity and perpetual surprise of a child's development; all the right to condole with misfortune and to be agreeably officious about remedies enjoyed by those who encounter the rheumatic; all the delight of professional note-comparing known to invalids, cooks, and pedagogues. To appear in my garden, equipped with sun-hat and hoe, was, I found, to be hail-fellowed by every condition of men--pickaninnies, delivery-men, professors, elegants and inelegants, experts and inexperts. My acquaintanceship among my neighbors grew like Jonah's gourd. "Do you mind my asking what that line of white strips is for?" "To warn the English sparrows off my pea-vines."--"Would you like some young cabbage-plants?"--"Your corn is lookin' fine!" Common interests were visible and inexhaustible. * * * * * Other sociabilities also I have found in the garden. We prate a good deal of "companionship with nature," and go out fussily to seek it, with camera, bird-book, field-glasses, and expensive camping gear. In the garden one loses all this self-consciousness. Instead of personifying nature, and offering her the compliment of man's society, one sinks into one's place as a piece of nature. The catbird spluttering joyous music at me, almost forgetting to be afraid; the cardinal that looks down where I stand tossing off a magnificent plume of spray from my watering-pot, and whistles, "We-e-ell! Who'd-have-thought-to-see-you-keeping-at-it?" and I myself, turning to my own uses the perpetual need of life to renew itself, to evolve out of seed and bulb new seeds and bulbs, which shall give birth in time to other seeds and bulbs--we are all part of the same process.