CAUSES OF SUCCESS. 3 1 



ten will the poor curate, with something more 

 than a good gardener's wages, and something less 

 than a good gardener's house, show what earnest 

 love can do ! Whenever I see at an exhibition a 

 white tie behind a box of Roses, I know (although 

 I may in days of youthful exuberance have irrev- 

 erently exclaimed to my clerical friends : *' Hollo, 

 Butler! are you bringing breakfast?") — I know 

 that, almost as a rule, bright gems shine within 

 that case. And ah ! who but he can tell the refresh- 

 ment, the rest, the peace, which he finds in his little 

 garden, coming home from the sick and the sor- 

 rowful, and here reminded that for them and him 

 there is an Eden, more beautiful than the first, a 

 garden where summer shall never cease ! 



And here I would ask permission to digress 

 briefly, that I may confirm a very interesting state- 

 ment which was made after our florist dinner at Lei- 

 cester* by the editor of ''The Gardener," and re- 

 ceived with hearty acclamations. He had been 

 told, he said, by a Scotch clergyman, that in his 

 visitations from house to house he had never met 

 with an ungenial reception where he had seen a 

 plant in the window. It was a promise of welcome ; 

 it was a sign that there dwelt within a love and 



* During the Provincial Show of the Royal Horticultural Society 

 in 1867. 



