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Propping his door open, he brought an easel and canvas, and setting them so that he could see the corner where she had gone in, began to sketch. An old stone fountain with three stone frogs stood in the garden near that corner, and beyond it was a flowering currant-bush, and beyond this again the green door on which a slanting gleam of sunlight fell.

Nor do I regard it as necessary. Our object is an abundant supply of excellent fruit; and this result can be obtained at a surprisingly small outlay of time and money, if they are expended judiciously. The art of trimming a currant-bush, like that of pruning a grape- vine, is best learned by observation and experience. One can give principles rather than lay down rules.

These things come so forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at the end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done but to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.

I respect old age; but an old currant-bush, hoary with mossy bark, is a melancholy spectacle. I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something about fertilizers: all agriculturists do. When you plant, you think you cannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, you think you cannot fertilize too little.

This road brought him presently into a field of ruins, in the midst of which, in the side of a hill, he saw an open door, and, not far off, a single stunted pine no greater than a currant-bush. The place was desert and very secret; a voice spoke in the count's bosom that there was something here to his advantage.

Up and down, to and fro, backwards and for wards over the sunny garden the butterflies, white, sulphur, and brown, flitted and fluttered, lightly poising on currant-bush or flower, loving life as they basked in the sunshine; and Penelope lay and watched them.

These things come so forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at the end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done but to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.

He is usually attached to low, moist, and retired situations, though he is often very familiar in his habits. His nest of dry sticks is sometimes woven into a currant-bush in a garden that adjoins a wood, and his quaint voice may be heard there as in his own solitary haunts.

The young women are usually the best pickers, on account of their superior dexterity. The cotton-stalk, or bush, is from two to five or six feet high. It is unlike any plant with which we are familiar in the North. It resembles a large currant-bush more nearly than any thing else I can think of. Where the branches are widest the plant is three or four feet from side to side.

Do not the facts in the case prove the reverse? A plant restricted to a single root can be hoed and worked around like a hill of corn or a currant-bush. With comparatively little trouble the ground between the rows can be kept clean and mellow.