GARDEN ROSES. 1 73 



my business, saw the pictures, heard an opera, wept my 

 annual tear at a tragedy (whereupon a swell in the con- 

 tiguous stall looked at me as though I were going to drown 

 him), roared at Buckstone, rode in the Park, met old 

 friends — and I was beginning to think that life in the 

 country was not so very much " more sweet than that of 

 painted pomp," when, engaged to a dinner-party, on the 

 third day of my visit, and to enliven my scenery, I bought 

 a Rose. Only a common Rose, one from a hundred which 

 a ragged girl was hawking in the streets,* and which the 

 swell I spoke of would have considered offal — a Moss- 

 Rosebud, with a bit of fern attached. Only a twopenny 

 Rose ; but as I carried it in my coat, and gazed on it, and 

 specially when, waking next morning, I saw it in my water- 

 jug — saw it as I lay in my dingy bedroom, and heard the 

 distant roar of Piccadilly instead of the thrush's song — saw 

 it, and thought of my own Roses — it seemed as though 

 they had sent to me a messenger, whom they knew I loved, 

 to bid me ''come home, come home." Then I thought 

 of our dinner - party overnight, and how my neighbour 



* " Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street, 

 Till — think of that, who find life so sweet — 

 She hates the smell of Roses !" 



—Hood. 



