2 GARDENING INDOORS AND UNDER GLASS 
looked, the importance and fun of keeping the liv- 
ing-rooms of the house cheerful with plants and 
flowers in winter, or the certainty and economy 
with which it may be done if one will use the plain 
common-sense methods necessary to make plants 
succeed. Too much care and coddling is just as 
sure to make growth forlorn and sickly as too much 
neglect. That may be one reason why one fre- 
quently sees such healthy looking plants framed in 
the dismal window of a factory tenement, where 
the chinks can never be stopped tight and the occu- 
pants find it hard enough to keep warm, while at 
the same time it is easy to find leafless and lanky 
specimens in the super-heated and moistureless air 
of drawing-rooms. 
It certainly is true that many modern houses of 
the better sort do not offer very congenial condi- 
tions to the healthy growth of plants. It is equally 
certain that in many cases these conditions may be 
changed by different management in such way that 
they would be not only more healthy for plants to 
live in, but so also for their human occupants. In 
many other cases there is nothing but lack of in- 
formation or energy in the way of constructing a 
place entirely suitable for the growth of plants. 
To illustrate what I mean, I mention the following 
instance of how one person made a suitable place 
in which to grow flowers. Two narrow storm 
windows, which had been discarded, were fastened 
