I INTRODUCTION 5 
come and look him up at once if he should be 
wanted. It will afford him varied interest, exercise, 
and work in the open air all the year round. In 
tilling the soil, the special work which God gave to 
man, he will find many a valuable lesson, which 
he will be able to tell, with authority and with 
much interest, to that majority of his unlearned 
parishioners who are themselves tillers of the soil. If 
there is no room in the parsonage garden, it is seldom 
indeed that some little piece of glebe cannot be 
taken in to be the pride of his heart and the focus 
of his midsummer hopes. And as the country 
parson is not usually over-wealthy, there will be 
the more encouragement for him to do the Rose 
work with his own hands, and to summon the aid 
of his single useful man only at actual show time, 
for the carting of manure, or for pressure in 
planting. 
He will thus become a real amateur, a true son of 
Adam, and genuine brother of the back-ache, with 
many thorns in his fingers and rough and hardened 
hands; but his Roses will be truly his own, he will 
have won them, and under the Creator will actually 
have made them himself. And not only will they 
seem to him brighter and purer and sweeter than 
any other Roses, but he will probably find in com- 
parison and competition, that they are better than 
those of his brother amateurs who do not personally 
attend to their plants; and it will be a great thought 
for him that other far richer men may have grand 
and glorious gardens, but that he in his humble 
little plot with his own hands raises some of the 
finest Roses in England. 
Note.—It is more than ever true, though perhaps 
