The well-to-do started the fashion, it cost less money to follow
than to withstand it and presently the landlords of the poor utilized
it.
The poor man--the poor woman--needs the protection of a fence to a
degree of which the well-to-do know nothing. In the common interest of
the whole community, of any community, the poor man--the poor
woman--ought to have a garden; but if they are going to have a garden
they ought to have a fence. We in Northampton know scores of poor homes
whose tenants strive year after year to establish some floral beauty
about them, and fail for want of enclosures. The neighbors' children,
their dogs, their cats, geese, ducks, hens--it is useless. Many refuse
to make the effort; some, I say, make it and give it up, and now and
then some one wins a surprising and delightful success. Two or three
such have taken high prizes in our competition. The two chief things
which made their triumph possible were, first, an invincible passion for
gardening, and, second, poultry-netting.
A great new boon to the home gardener they are, these wire fencings and
nettings. With them ever so many things may be done now at a quarter or
tenth of what they would once have cost. Our old-fashioned fences were
sometimes very expensive, sometimes very perishable, sometimes both.
Also they were apt to be very ugly. Yet instead of concealing them we
made them a display, while the shrubbery which should have masked them
in leaf and bloom stood scattered over the lawn, each little new bush by
itself, visibly if not audibly saying--
"You'd scarce expect one of my age----"
etc.
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