.j:ii 



every flower-lover, irrespective of ability to draw a leaf or paint a petal. 

 The mere faculty for reproducing on paper or canvas what is placed 

 before us is not everything. The ability to see the beauty that awaits 

 discover}' in the wayside weed, to feel the glory of the colour in the 

 depth of a rose, to find delight in the severe outline of a blackthorn 

 branch or in the grace of the hazel catkins, or the ruggedness of an 

 apple bough — these are satisfactions that cannot be measured by an 

 ordinary rule, nor defined by ordinary speech. They are worth more 

 to us individually than the most faultless technique. 



To love the little things that God has made cannot fail to bring us 

 a step nearer to the Creator. And Miss Angell's " talks " help us to 

 see these little things — the ground-ivy flower, the jasmine twig, the 

 crimson on the back of the rose-leaf, the beauty of the dry dead stalks 

 in the November hedgerow — ^just the commonplaces that we might so 

 easily pass unnoticed, the commonplaces that become wonderments 

 when we do notice them ; the little things that fill us with amazement 

 at the immensity of their beauty, once we really look at them. The 

 trouble with so many of us is that we simply do not see. 



For those who not only have the seeing eye and the appreciative 

 mind, but also the responsive hand, this book will be a mine of delight 

 and a storehouse of helpfulness. The little bits and fragmentary 

 sketches will suggest .so much, and induce even the most diffident to try 

 their powers ; while the finished pictures give us an ideal to strive after, 

 and show us how far removed is the flower-painting of to-day from the 

 stiff, unnatural, younglady-like productions of our grandmothers' daj'. 



Two pictures by Hayward Young are also included in this volume, 

 showing the Flower Garden in Ital}- and in Holland. 



