38 RIVERSIDE LETTERS v 



messing with liquid manure. No doubt the 

 sight of my wild-looking plants would 

 drive a professional " Mum "-grower frantic ; 

 but I maintain that the large free clusters of 

 bloom that I pick in November, are far 

 more lovely in their grace and variety, than 

 any of the huge solitary fatted up things 

 which one sees at shows, and which are little 

 better than gigantic rosettes, each on a thick 

 stem by itself, tied stiff and stark all the way 

 up to a stick. Four or five such at times 

 occupy one pot, but in every case all the 

 natural graceful tendency of the plant is 

 severely repressed and thwarted by a whole 

 year's laborious meddling with nature. It is 

 the old old story, monstrosity usurping the 

 place of beauty, the wonderful and the mon- 

 strous appealing to the great majority of 

 minds so much more forcibly than the 

 beautiful. 



I make further use of my glasshouse by 

 starting annuals in it in pots and boxes, also 

 providing my wife with pans of mustard and 



