ORCHIDS. 53 
and the thickness of a straw, while the second 
struggled into growth with pain and difficulty, 
reached the size of a grain of wheat, and gave it 
up. Needless to say that the wicked and unfortu- 
nate proprietor had not seen trace of a bloom. 
Then at length, after five years’ torment, he set it 
free, and I took charge of the wretched sufferer. 
Forthwith he began to show his gratitude, and at 
this moment—the summer but half through—his 
leading head has regained all the strength lost in 
three years, while the back growth, which seemed 
dead, outtops the best bulb my predecessor could 
produce. 
And I have perhaps a hundred in like case, 
cripples regaining activity, victims rescued on 
their death-bed. If there be a placid joy in life 
superior to mine, as I stro]l through my houses of 
a morning, much experience of the world in many 
lands and many circumstances has not revealed it 
tome. And any of my readers can attain it, for— 
in no conventional sense—I am my own gardener ; 
that is to say, no male being ever touches an 
orchid of mine. 
One could hardly cite a stronger argument to 
demolish the superstitions that still hang around 
this culture. If a busy man, journalist, essayist, 
novelist, and miscellaneous /zttérateur, who lives by 
