The ditches in this little half-acre garden, if placed in a continuous line, would reach six hundred feet, and the crop increases so fast that one hundred bunches a week can be cut throughout the year.  The hot suns of summer injure the tender cresses; hence butter-beans are planted along the ditches to shade them.  The bean soon covers the light trellis which is built for it to run upon, and forms an airy screen for the tender plants.  During the autumn and winter months the light frame-work is removed, and sunlight freely admitted.

Cresses can be grown with little trouble in pure water of the proper temperature; and as each bed is replanted but once a year, in the month of October, the yield is large and profitable.

The intelligent cultivator of this water-cress garden frequently has boarders from a distance, who reside with him that they may receive the full benefit of a diet of tender cresses fresh from the running water.  Few, indeed, know the benefit to be derived from such a diet, or the water-cress garden would not be such a novelty to Americans.  We, as a nation, take fewer salads with our meals than the people of any of the older sister-lands, perhaps, because in the rush of every-day life we have not time to eat them.  We are, at the same time, adding largely each year to the list of confirmed dyspeptics, many of whom might be saved from this worst of all ills by a persistent use of the fresh water-cress, crisp lettuce, and other green and wholesome articles of food.  Such advice is, however, of little use, since many would say, like a gentleman I once met, “Why, I would rather die than diet!” Three hundred feet from the garden the water of its springs flows into the Gulf of Mexico, the waves of which beat against the clean sandy shore.

Among other things in this interesting town, I discovered in the boat-house belonging to the summer residence of Mr. C. T. Howard, of New Orleans, John C. Cloud’s little boat, the “Jennie.”  Strange emotions filled my mind as I gazed upon the light Delaware River skiff which had been the home for so many days of that unfortunate actor, whose disastrous end I have already related to my reader.

The boat had been brought from Plaquemine Plantation on the Mississippi River to this distant point.  It was about fifteen feet in length, and four feet wide amidships.  She was sharp at both bow and stern, and was almost destitute of sheer.  There was a little deck at each end, and the usual galvanized-iron oar-locks, without out-riggers, while upon her quarters were painted very small national flags.  She was built of white pine, and was very light.

Each summer, when guests are at Bi1oxi, sympathizing groups crowd round this little skiff; and listen to the oft-repeated story of the poor northerner who sacrificed his own life while engaged in the attempt to win a bet to support his large and destitute family.

Here by the restless sea, which seems ever to be moaning a requiem for the dead, I left the little “Jennie,” a monument of American pluck, but, at the same time, a mortifying instance of the fruitlessness of our national spirit of adventure when there is no principle to back it.