THE GARDEN OF THE GODS.

THE people around Barnes Street well remember when Mr. Middlerib planted the “garden of the gods.” He bought cartloads of rich earth for it, and loaded it with patent fertilizers, and ground and stirred and raked it until the soil was fine as corn meal. The seeds were received by express, and there wasn’t a package that didn’t have a full college course of Latin printed on the back, and Mr. Middlerib grew bald trying to pronounce the fearful and wonderful names of the seed, that were to make the garden of the gods the wonder of South Hill. When these germs of magnificent flora were planted the neighbors hung over the fence in silent admiration and listened to Mr. Middlerib’s botanical lectures, delivered over every package that was opened. Where the abolutus haciedendus microbulus was imbedded, he erected a large trestle immediately, for that impetuous climber to ascend and ramble over. And where he implanted the diocantanean psyttachineliensis psoddium, he reared a tall, straight stick for that towering mass of blossom and foliage to shape itself against. He refused the most penetrating hints for a few seeds of the bianthus geridian psottoliensis giasticus, floridens bilthus, and the care and great gravity with which he earthed the germs of the bibulus Burlingtoniensis giganteus brought tears to the eyes of the women. And when the seeds were all planted, how zealously Mr. Middlerib watched and wrought and fought for their protection. He would get up in the night to chase the neighbors’ cows around the house two or three times, and across the garden of the gods four or five times, and out of the front gate once, and return to his virtuous couch with profanity in his heart and mud on his feet, and one slipper down by the cistern and the other in the verbena bed.

All the cut-worms in the State of Iowa appeared to be attending a mass convention in the garden of the gods. When the tinner came to fix the spout, he stuck the ladder by which he ascended to the roof in that sacred ground, and the carpenter who patched the cornice set one of his trestles in the same place. Every tramp who came to beg, selected that one favored locality as the only spot in the world where he might assume the usual humble and respectful position, and rehearse the stereotyped application for provender. Mr. Middlerib nearly wore out his voice shouting at people and cows, and railing at cut-worms, and one Sunday morning he fell asleep in church, and Mrs. M. prodded him with her parasol just as the minister said, in impressive accents, “And here we are treading on sacred ground.” “Git off of it!” yelled Mr. Middlerib, dreaming of the grocer’s boy standing on the g. o. g., and using his oft-repeated phrase, “Scatter, or I’ll bury ye in it!” And it raised such a church scandal that Mr. Middlerib was obliged to double his subscription to keep in good fellowship.

But after manifold troubles, the garden came along beautifully, only the plants acted a little queer. The climber refused to climb, save in a horizontal position, but after its own way; and in all general directions on a horizontal plane it manifested a disposition to crowd all over that part of South Hill. The diocantanean psyttachineliensis psoddium scorned the straight stick by which it was expected to brace itself, and grew out in crooked branches like a garden oak. But the tender care it received, and the rich earth in which it was planted, showed what wonders cultivation will do, and when, at last, Mr. Middlerib, after long and manfully holding out against the declarations of the envious neighbors and the hints of his wife and daughter, was obliged to sit down on the porch, one lovely Summer evening, and admit that he had wasted enough breath to make a tornado, and filled the air with vociferous and murderous threats and vituperations, and quarreled with three-quarters of his acquaintances, all for the sake of raising a jimson weed, it was nevertheless a jimson weed nine feet high, with blossoms as big as inflated sun-flowers. So he let the jimson weed stand, and argued with every one who came to the house that, with sufficient care and proper cultivation, it could be developed into a fruit-bearing tree. As for the abolutos haciedendus microbulos, as soon as he was morally and botanically certain that it was just chickweed, Mr. Middlerib one night secretly pulled it up and threw it away, and ever afterward professed to be heart-broken because some rascally, envious florist had come up from Keokuk and stolen the choicest climber in the Mississippi Valley. The bianthus geridian psottoliensis giasticus, floridens bilthus never showed itself until toward the latter part of June. Then it thrust up a delicate, fragile little sprout, drank in a little of the glad free air and pure sunlight, heard itself called by its full name, and drooped under the burden and died. The bibulus Burlingtoniensis giganteus came up and did well. It did not flower very abundantly; but it developed very marked qualities. The chickens came up and pecked at it, and then laid them down under the currant bushes and closed their eyes upon this world of sorrow and mysterious plants. The pigs got into the yard and rooted a little of it up, and their sudden demise gave rise to the rumor of the hog cholera, and the air of the hill was vocal for the next five days with the protests of healthy porkers against the popular modes of treating the hog cholera, such as boring holes along the spine with a red hot iron and splitting the ears and tail and rubbing in salt and cayenne pepper. And after Master Middlerib fooled with it and got some of it on his face, which immediately swelled up so that nothing was visible to his eyes, and his eyes were visible to nobody, for nearly a week, the wonderful plant was pulled up with the kitchen tongs and thrown into the alley, where the geese of South Hill found it, ate it, grew fat on it; and came around and asked for more. Nothing that grows under the heavens can kill a South Hill goose.

There were other plants in the garden of the gods that came up and grew to maturity and brought forth blossoms each after his kind, but as they turned out to be various species of rag-weed and dog-fennel, they were not considered worthy of mention by Mr. Middlerib. But he is disheartened with scientific gardening, and he only lives now for one object: to ascertain whether these Latin names are really the scientific names of those plants which they set forth, or he was swindled by the traveling seed agent.