86 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



little world, her doll, watching her tenderly, and 

 singing a lullaby which, regarding the condition 

 of those two immense blue eyes, appears to be 

 quite hopeless ; then decking her with every bit 

 of finery which she can beg from mammy or nurse, 

 and waiting upon her with a fond untiring service. 

 And even so did I, in the childhood of that 

 life, which is always young — do not our hearts 

 foreknow, my brothers, the happy truth, which old 

 men certify, that the love of flowers is of those 

 few earthly pleasures which age cannot wither ? 

 — even so did I, in 



'* My sallet days, 

 When I was green in judgment," 



essay, with an enthusiastic though ofttimes mis- 

 taken zeal, to propitiate and to serve the Rose. 

 And specially, as with my little boy and his large 

 idol, in the matter of food, I tried to please her 

 with a great diversity of diet. I made anxious 

 experiment of a multiplicity of manures — organic 

 and inorganic, animal and vegetable, cheap and 

 costly, home and foreign. I labored to discover 

 her favorite dish as earnestly as the alchemist to 

 realize the Philosopher's Stone ; but I differed 

 from the alchemist, the Rosarian from the Rosi- 

 crucian, in one essential point — I found it ! 



