n8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



headlong into the sea of garden mysteries and under- 

 currents for the first time, I give you warning ! if you 

 have a real rose garden, or, merely what Lavinia 

 Cortright calls hers, a rosary of assorted beads, try as 

 far as possible to have all your seed sowing and trans- 

 planting done before the June rose season begins, that 

 you may give yourself up to this one flower, heart, soul, 

 yes, and body also ! It was no haphazard symbolist 

 that, in troubadour days, gave Love the rose for his 

 own flower, for to be its real self the rose demands all 

 and must be all in all to its possessor. 



As for you, Mary Penrose, who eschewed hen- 

 keeping as a deceitful masquerade of labour, under the 

 name of rural employment, ponder deeply before you 

 have spade put to turf in your south lawn, and invest 

 your birthday dollars in the list of roses that at this very 

 moment I am preparing to send you, with all possible 

 allurement of description to egg you on. For unless you 

 have very poor luck, which the slope of your land, 

 depth of soil, and your own pertinacity and staying 

 qualities discount, many more dollars in quarters, 

 halves, or entire will follow the first large outlay, and 

 I may even hear of your substituting the perpetual 

 breakfast prune of boarding-houses for your grapefruit 

 in winter, or being overcome in summer by the prevail- 



