OF HOUSE-PLANTS 



them to death. Such is the almost criminal 

 carelessness that the most intelligent of us are 

 guilty of, in our treatment of our plants. 

 We make the winter a season of slow suicide 

 for ourselves, and our plants fall victims to 

 our mistaken ideas of comfort. 

 ^Plants, when grown as they ought to be, are 

 as useful to the human occupants of the room 

 as thermometers are, if we are willing to be 

 governed by their ideas of the proper thing, 

 as regards fresh air, temperature, and moist- 

 ure. They will show all the vigor of plants in 

 the garden instead of the weaknesses peculiar 

 to the ordinary collection. They will not be 

 lanky, and spindling, like the general type of 

 house-plant, and they will bloom — actually 

 bloom, — much to the wonderment of many 

 women who attempt plant-growing under the 

 difficulties I have mentioned, and who are 

 tolerably well satisfied if they can keep their 

 plants alive during the winter. When you see 

 fine plants in the windows of a home, you can 

 be sure they have been given fresh air daily, 

 have not been subjected to intense heat, and 

 that there is moisture in the rooms where they 

 are kept. This is why I say they are useful as 

 indicators of conditions which prevail in the 



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