possessor of living teeth dreads only less than the rack itself; and they do not have to be pulled out, with an agony comparable to the effect of drawing the entire brain out through the hole at the roots.

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From my experience before and since my accident, I should certainly advise my fellow-creatures to have as little to do with real teeth as possible, and to substitute the imitation as soon as they can. There may be a certain amount of suffering in having teeth, and especially sound ones, extracted, but the satisfaction of being finally rid of the troublesome things more than pays for the temporary annoyance. natural set will become dirty in spite of endless scrubbing with the tooth-brush; some are invariably longer than others; there are projections and depressions; wherever they lap, tartar settles; inside it is impossible to get at them at all, and they compel a half-yearly interview with the dentist, from which one comes away greatly unnerved. Their substitutes are a great improvement to one's personal appearance, and never cause the slightest inconvenience, besides saving hours in cleaning, that, in a long life, amount to an aggregate of years. The new teeth. were so far superior to those that they replaced, that they are valued on the credit side of the account at a hundred dollars, showing a clear profit of one hun

dred per cent. In fact, I regard this discovery as one of the most valuable, if not the very most valuable, of the results of my country experience.

The premises are set down at an increase of one thousand dollars, and, if my readers had seen the difference between a bare tract of land and a garden blooming with beauty, odorous with fragrance, and smiling with abundance, they would have felt that the improvement was stated at too low a rate. The strawberries are also put at a large advance upon the prime cost; but a thriving bed of this excellent fruit, bidding fair to supply the wants of the entire household, to gratify friends, and to supply the place of costlier desserts, was well worth a round sum of money. It certainly cost me much care and anxiety; it had failed once, and threatened at first to give out the second time, but finally had proved an absolute success, and was already becoming the parent of other plantations.

Among the items of yearly expense will be found included a charge for entrance-fee to the skating-pond. This may at first seem to be more of a luxury than an actual necessity, but, as it was clear that I should not have incurred it if I had not been in Flushing, I put it down. My yearly receipts do not represent so much income actually received, for, as has been stated

previously, there did not appear to be a market for garden produce in Flushing, but are given as the amount I should have had to pay if I had bought the various articles at retail prices. This is clearly proper; for, if we had wanted them to eat, had purchased them at the stalls, and had paid the current charges, there would have been just so much additional outlay; that we did not eat them is no answer, for we could have done so had we wished.

This exhibit was certainly entirely satisfactory; the account had steadily improved, and bade fair soon to show a large income. I have even gone so far as to leave out of question rent saved, dissipation at Saratoga avoided, health improved, digestion invigorated, pure air enjoyed, and a thousand other matters for which we pay so dearly; I merely take the hard, dry figures the positive profit and loss in dollars and cents-and they give a clear net profit of nearly eight hundred dollars. Nothing could be asked more promising than this; if it went on improving at this rate, there was no telling where it would stop. Farming had evidently proved itself a source of vast wealth. We were nowhere near the limit of the productiveness of my five acres, and, with additional attention, we might reasonably anticipate increased returns. The result was so encouraging, the life at

Flushing so charming, the access to the city so easy, that I resolved to move there permanently. There was much to be done besides sleigh-riding and skating, even in the winter months; roots had to be stored from frost, bulbs required attention, potatoes and turnips demanded care, chicken-coops had to be built, forcing-frames dug, and a green-house erected. Taking all these things into consideration, I resolved to abandon the city, and, in spite of frozen ground, deep snows, piercing winds, and muddy roads, to devote myself to agricultural pursuits.

CHAPTER XVIIL

PREPARATIONS FOR REMOVAL.

N the last chapter I have stated that so charming

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did the country seem to me, so pure its pleasures, and profitable its cultivation, that I resolved to remove there permanently, and give up entirely the less lucrative, if more distinguished, pursuit of the law. A most essential preparation for this change was the necessity of cultivating and increasing the present stock of plants-the tender and fragile things requiring winter protection-which the abundance of the last year had left me. My stock was not, perhaps, what finished gardeners would call choice; they were not those out-of-the-way foreign productions which only rejoice in one name, and that a polysyllabic Latin one; but, although they were equally entitled to a scientific appellation, they were generally known under common ones. I had an abundance of carnations, which I had sometimes referred to as varieties of Dianthus caryophyllus when my uneducated city visitors called to see me. There was quite a stock of scarlet geranium; for, al