4 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



are as unfit for flying as for thinking.' Nothing can be done 

 well without thought certainly not gardening, nor house- 

 keeping, nor managing children. A curious example of 

 this is given in a recently published account of the most 

 famous of modern jugglers. He says that he trained his 

 brain in youth to exert itself in three different ways at 

 the same time. This no doubt is the reason that he is 

 now pre-eminent in his own line. 



January 3rd. I will begin by telling you that I was 

 brought up for the most part in the country, in a 

 beautiful, wild, old-fashioned garden. This garden, 

 through circumstances, had remained in the hands of an 

 old gardener for more than thirty years, which carries 

 us back nearly a century. Like so many young people 

 I see about me now, I cared only for the flowers 

 growing, that I might have the pleasure of pick- 

 ing them. Mr. Euskin says that it is luxurious and 

 pleasure-loving people who like them gathered. Garden- 

 ing is, I think, essentially the amusement of the middle- 

 aged and old. The lives of the young, as a rule, are too 

 full to give the time and attention required. 



Almost all that has remained in my mind of my 

 young days in this garden is how wonderfully the old 

 man kept the place. He succeeded in flowering many 

 things year after year with no one to help him, and with 

 the frost in the valley to contend against in spring. It 

 was difficult, too, for him to get seeds or plants, since the 

 place was held by joint owners, whom he did not like to 

 ask for them. The spot was very sheltered, and that is 

 one of the greatest of all secrets for plant cultivation. An 

 ever-flowing mill-stream ran all round the garden ; and 

 the hedges of China-roses, Sweetbriar, Honeysuckle, and 

 white Hawthorn tucked their toes into the soft mud, and 

 throve year after year. The old man was a philosopher 

 in his way, and when on a cold March morning my 



