i ro THE FERN PARADISE. 



a shady corner anywhere, and they will grow 

 and develop, unrolling their charming fronds, and 

 exhibiting their sweet feathery forms with all 

 their natural grace in the presence of squalor and 

 misery. The poor seamstress painfully working 

 in yon ill-lighted garret, where the glorious sun 

 never comes, might perhaps have shed bitter tears 

 over the withered flower that all her care had 

 failed to rear! But a fern would grow where 

 her flower had died, would smile upon her with 

 its mute flowerless smile, would live in the dark 

 light of her attic window, and, unfolding its fronds 

 day by day, would assume its most majestic and 

 graceful form even in the presence of a poor 

 seamstress. 



But it is not only the poor who have to live 

 in gardenless dwellings, and look out from sun- 

 less windows. The mansions of the rich, and 

 thousands of houses of the well-to-do, and of 

 the middle classes, are necessarily in this great 

 London, and in other cities and towns, placed 

 where the sun cannot exert his charming life-giv- 

 ing influence. Many a window of a grand house 



