flower 



Replant the larger bulbs in the beds made ready 

 in the garden proper, then take all the wee children 

 to an especial nursery prepared for them in the vege- 

 table garden ; by the following season they will be 

 sufficiently grown to be permitted to make their de- 

 but, when they should bloom, even though modestly. 



The most exciting of all tulips is the Gesneriana 

 spathulata not because of its spectacular name, 

 but because of its history and its transcendent 

 beauty. This is the tulip which turned the Holland- 

 ers quite mad for all those phlegmatic eaters of 

 three hundred and sixty-five cold, hard-boiled eggs a 

 year, sold or mortgaged all their terrestrial posses- 

 sions to gamble in the Gesneriana stock. 



One bulb sometimes brought I forget just what, 

 but it went way up into the thousand dollars some- 

 where ; and Gesneriana, was even quoted regularly on 

 the London stock exchange, as if it were a gold mine, 

 or transcontinental railroad. 



When the corner in Gesneriana broke, thousands of 

 Dutchmen " went broke " too, and as great a panic 

 spread through the land as if the dikes had all 

 broken. No wonder the spathulata holds its head 

 so high with such a history as this. It stands on a 

 stem twenty-four inches high, and is of the clearest 

 105 



