2/4 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



of size in the blooms this morning (which means that his 

 are overblown). 



In accordance with the old and true proverb, his dis- 

 honesty does not thrive. He steals several paces in front 

 of his brother archers, but for one arrow hitting the gold, 

 he misses, breaks, or loses fifty. I remember some years 

 ago, just as we had commenced our survey as judges at 

 one of the provincial shows, an exhibitor reappeared, hot 

 and out of breath, and " begged pardon, but he had left a 

 knife among his Roses." He had a magnificent rose in his 

 coat, and, ''from information which I had received," I 

 thought it my duty to watch his movements without ap- 

 pearing to do so. He left the tent with a much smaller 

 flower in his button-hole, and I went immediately to his 

 box. There was the illustrious stranger, resplendent, but 

 with a fatal beauty. The cunning one had hoist himself 

 with his own petard, for he had forgotten another bloom of 

 the same Rose, already in his 24, and I at once wrote '* dis- 

 qualified for duplicates" upon his exhibition-card. Keen 

 must have been the shaft which he had himself feathered 

 from that borrowed plume, but keener far to feel (for it was 

 a fact patent to all), that if he had not made the addition, 

 he must have won the premier prize. 



