第14章

For his part, he welcomed the Chinese emigration: we needed the Chinaman in our gardens to eat the "pusley; "and he thought the whole problem solved by this simple consideration.To get rid of rats and "pusley," he said, was a necessity of our civilization.He did not care so much about the shoe-business; he did not think that the little Chinese shoes that he had seen would be of service in the army: but the garden-interest was quite another affair.We want to make a garden of our whole country: the hoe, in the hands of a man truly great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than the pen.He presumed that General B-tl-r had never taken into consideration the garden-question, or he would not assume the position he does with regard to the Chinese emigration.He would let the Chinese come, even if B-tl-r had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but Ichanged the subject.

During our entire garden interview (operatically speaking, the garden-scene), the President was not smoking.I do not know how the impression arose that he "uses tobacco in any form;" for I have seen him several times, and he was not smoking.Indeed, I offered him a Connecticut six; but he wittily said that he did not like a weed in a garden,--a remark which I took to have a personal political bearing, and changed the subject.

The President was a good deal surprised at the method and fine appearance of my garden, and to learn that I had the sole care of it.

He asked me if I pursued an original course, or whether I got my ideas from writers on the subject.I told him that I had had no time to read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except "Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and that I had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, except that I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on this line if"--The President stopped me abruptly, and said it was unnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.

Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it.Sometimes, he said, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it in resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it dropped jocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for an office, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would get to running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-r sings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.

He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on his brain for years.

The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden, that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position of head gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics.Itold him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign appointment.I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to take an appointment; and I had kept my resolution.As to any home office, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless for me to take one.The President mused a moment, and then smiled, and said he would see what could be done for me.I did not change the subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.

The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden.He said it carried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seen lately.He looked forward with delight to the time when he could again have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, and not have to get so much "sarce" from Congress.

The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glass of lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.

It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak.It would have been impossible to keep it from use by any precautions.There are people who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with iron spikes.Such is the adoration of Station.