JULY. 171 



Now for the sweet surprise. " Why, w'hat is this ? " " This ? let me 

 look at my memorandum ; these are assorted Tulips ; and these are 

 Hyacinths, — A No. 1, ma'am." " What on earth do you expect to do 

 with these bulbs at this time of the year ? why, they ought to have 

 been in the ground last October — they ought to be nearly done blos- 

 soming by this time of year ; and besides, see the musty bottoms — 

 the things are dead and gone long ago ! What did you get them 

 for? how much did you give for them }" "Never mind, they cost 

 but little — no great affair — I knew they were not much, but I thought 

 somsthing might come of them." " Well, now, as sure as I am 

 alive, here you've brought a pack of Cinnamon Roses home, and I 

 have had a man digging half a day to get the pests out of my garden ! 

 Do throw them right into the street. Look here, husband, here's 

 snowballs, and waxberries, and mock-orange flowers, and lilacs ; you 

 didn't buy this stuff, did you, husband .'' Our garden is full of them, 

 and has been this ten years." " Stuff! I tell you it's no such thing. 

 Why, here's what they are (reading from his memorandum), they 

 are the Viburnum Opulus, and the Symphoria racemosa, and the 

 Philadelphus coronarius, and Syringa vulgaris!" "Pshaw! you've 

 paid away your money for a pretty parcel of Latin names ! I don't 

 care what you call them, they are nothing but our old-fashioned 

 syringas, and lilacs, and snowballs, and waxberries ! " Alas, out of 

 some thirty dollars' worth of plants, roots and bulbs, the poor wife 

 got half a dozen new plants, that she might have purchased of an 

 honest florist for two dollars ! 



2. Who does not know garden beggars ? Every spring they 

 begin to feel the garden impulse. Out they run to see what they 

 have left in their beds. A pitiable account their garden gives of 

 their last season's care. Weeds choked out these; the drouth de- 

 stroyed that ; worms and bugs eat up one thing ; dogs and pigs 

 scratched or rooted out another thing ; and the winter did the busi- 

 ness for pretty much every thing else. " Never mind ; I know who's 



got more of them. Mrs. , good soul ! she's given me plants 



every spring these five years ! " So away she goes, begging roots 

 here, bulbs there, a few seeds, a slip of this plant, a cutting of that, 

 a root of another; and by night she has got a heterogeneous heap of 

 thirty or forty kinds. They all go through the violence of being 

 punched into the earth; take a gallon of water for their first drink; 

 the one half die in the act of transplanting, the other half linger un- 

 thought of, and die at their leisure along the season ; for the flower- 

 monger, good soul, got over her paroxysm the first hot day that came, 

 sweating in the garden, and will trouble herself no more till the 

 next vernal begging season returns. 



We say, once more, in closing, do nothing that you do not do 

 well. One good plant is worth a prairie full of starved and stinted 

 things ! 



