138 EVERSLEY GARDENS 



that it should be imported into our gardens, 

 into the culture of God's loveliest gifts to poor 

 man, into the purest, sweetest, most sane and 

 wholesome of recreations, is indeed too much. 

 But so it is, alas ! and we hear on all sides, from 

 morning till night, not that Hybrid Teas are 

 beautiful, but that they " are all the fashion " ; 

 not that Sweet Peas are enchanting, but that 

 they are "the fashionable flower," to which 

 everything else must be sacrificed ; and that 

 Geraniums are completely superseded by " the 

 fashionable Begonia." I would as soon drown 

 one of my homely tabby cats because it was 

 not a pale lavender Persian, as destroy my 

 Hybrid Perpetuals because they were not Tea 

 Roses ; and though I should be charmed to 

 possess a lavender Persian as well as the humble 

 tabby, I can thoroughly appreciate the delights 

 and merits of the very newest Tea Rose without 

 abating one jot of my love for Ulrich Erunner, 

 Duke of Edinburgh, Mrs. John Laing, Mrs. Harry 

 Turner, the dear old General Jacqueminot, or 

 the new and superb Frau Karl Druschki. For 

 without blindly following the fashion of the 



