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137
The Solitary Summer
·
Elizabeth Von Arnim
118
He
makes
mistakes
sometimes
in
the
men
he
engages,
just
as
I
used
to
when
I
did
the
engaging,
and
he
had
one
poor
young
man
as
apprentice
who
very
soon,
like
the
first
of
my
three
meek
gardeners,
went
mad.
His
madness
was
of
a
harmless
nature
and
took
a
literary
form;
indeed,
that
was
all
they
had
against
him,
that
he
would
write
books.
He
used
to
sit
in
the
early
morning
on
my
special
seats
in
the
garden,
and
strictly
meditate
the
thankless
muse
when
he
ought
to
have
been
carting
manure;
and
he
made
his
fellow-apprentices
unspeakably
wretched
by
shouting
extracts
from
Schiller
at
them
across
the
intervening
gooseberry
bushes.
Let
me
hasten
to
say
that
I
had
never
spoken
to
him,
and
should
not
even
have
known
what
he
was
like
if
he
had
not
worn
eyeglasses,
so
that
the
Man
of
Wrath's
insinuation
that
I
affect
the
sanity
of
my
gardeners
is
entirely
without
justification.
The
eyeglasses
struck
me
as
so
odd
on
a
gardener
that
I
asked
who
he
was,
and
was
told
that
he
had
been
studying
for
the
Bar,
but
could
not
pass
the
examinations,
and
had
taken
up
gardening
in
the
hope
of
getting
back
his
health
and
spirits.
I
thought
this
a
very
sensible
plan,
and
was
beginning
to
feel
interested
in
him
when
one
day
the
post
brought
me
a
registered
packet
containing
a
manuscript
play
he
had
written
called
"The
Lawyer
as
Gardener,"
dedicated
to
me.
The
Man
of
Wrath
and
I
were
both
in
it,
the
Man
of
Wrath,
however,
only
in
the
list
of
characters,
so
that
he
should
not
feel
hurt,
I
suppose,
for
he
never
appeared
on
the
scenes
at
all.
As
for
me,
I
was
represented
as
going
about
quoting
Tolstoi
in
season
and
out
of
season
to
the
gardeners--a
thing
I
protest
I
never
did.
The
young
man
was
sent
home
to
his
people,
and
I
have
been
asking
myself
ever
since
what
there
is
about
this
place
that
it
should
so
persistently
produce
books
and
lunacy?
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