It's awful, sir! Why, you've got about two acres of pokeberry and not a blessed bit of cabbage or turnips among them." "Mr.Hoops, this is terrible news; and do you know I gave a lot of those seeds to Potts and Coffin ?" "I know you did; and I seen Colonel Coffin this mornin' with a shot-gun goin' round askin' people if they knew where he could find you." "Find me! What do you mean ?" "Well, you see, sir, that there onion seed that you gave him was really the seed of the silver maple tree, and it's growed up so thick all over his garden that a cat can't crawl through it.

There's about forty million shoots and suckers in that garden, and they'll have to be cut out with a handsaw.

It'll take about a year to do it." "You appall me, Hoops!" "And that's not the worst of it.

The roots are so matted and interlocked jes beneath the surface that you can't make any impression on 'em with a pickaxe.

That garden of Coffin's is ruined--entirely ruined, sir.