JULY. 157 



be understood as absolute and luivarylng ; on the contrary, circum- 

 stances often cause great variations in such points as the size and 

 the smoothness or hispidity of the foHai^e, the size of the bunches 

 and berries, and even the flavour. My descriptions should therefore 

 be taken as representing plants and fruit of average strength and 

 quality. 



J. B. Whiting. 



A PACKET OF SEEDS SAVED BY AN OLD GARDENER. 



[Continued from p. 91.] 



I SOON got to work ; and the weather being bad, and the squire 

 (this was squire as well as the last) not able to get out, I had a 

 good chance to alter things a little. I began upon the greenhouse, 

 washed the glass and paint-work outside : this made a better light to 

 get the plants cleaned, and a pretty job it was to get the scale off 

 and the tiy killed. It was long since they'd smelt tobacco. I had 

 a foreman, two men, and a boy; and a good set they were, only at 

 first humdrum and sleepy, like him that was gone before me. After 

 the plants were got in as good order as thej^ could be, a few lumps 

 of lime slacked in water served to whiten the wall and flue ; and a 

 sponge, brush, and mop, altered the inside of the paint-work as 

 much as the out. When we had finished, my foreman said, "I 

 would not have believed it." We did just the same with the 

 vineries ; and when they were finished, I made my men clean them- 

 selves ; for I always say, that a gardener that does not keep his 

 body and clothes clean is a dirty gardener with his plants ; and if I 

 was a gentleman, I'd have nobody about me that neither pleased 

 eyes or nose. 



I had a comfortable pretty little cottage on the premises, and 

 that's where a gardener should be. One nice room opened on to the 

 garden, and that was fitted up for my master and the ladies. An 

 elderly woman did for me and the boy, who slept in the cottage, as 

 I was not married. She worked tjo a little in the garden, and every 

 little was a help then, for there was every thing to do except the 

 kitchen-garden ; that was in order. There was not a mould-heap — 

 nothing to hand — all to make. It was tight work, I assure you. 

 There was the cow-man to please, for the cart that brought fodder 

 for his yard was the only one I could get. Then there was the 

 keeper on the look-out to pick a hole in my coat about disturbing his 

 game when I went in the woods for leaf-mould ; and the coachman, 

 he would not half muck his stables out, for he said he wanted his 

 horses to lay warm, and so had clean straw over a foot of dung. 

 Clipping wasn't the fashion then. When they all said no to my 

 wants, I said, " Very well," and thanked 'em ; and ' no' they said a 

 long while, but yet I thanked 'em, till I fairly tired 'em out into say- 

 ing yes ; and as I shewed myself ready to oblige them, they soon 

 took to obliging me. People can stand quarrelling with all their lives ; 



