CHEAP GARDENING 105 



that the rich man buys a costly new plant only to 

 show that he can afford it. But good gardeners are 

 not apt to be vulgarians, and nearly all of them love 

 novelties and, if they can, pursue them in spite of a 

 hundred disappointments. And yet this passion can 

 be tamed by philosophy, as the present writer has 

 discovered; and other and, perhaps, manlier passions 

 can be nourished to take its place. Philosophy, based 

 upon experience, admonishes the gardener that some 

 novelties are not novelties at all and that others 

 have nothing but their newness and costliness to 

 recommend them. It also comforts him with the 

 thought that, as we have said, most novelties, if they 

 are worth having, will soon grow cheap. There are, 

 it is true, some bulbs which have to be collected 

 in their native homes every year, and which, being 

 rare even then, never become very cheap. But there 

 is always a chance that some year the collector will 

 find a multitude of them, and that they will suddenly 

 drop in price. Very likely they will soon rise again; 

 but it is chances of this kind that make catalogues 

 more exciting to read than any novel, and catalogues 

 cost nothing. Anyhow the pursuit of novelties is 

 sure to cause as much disappointment as delight; 

 for the writers of catalogues have sanguine imagina- 

 tions that take fire at a hint. They are ready to be- 

 lieve all that the collectors tell them; and they do 

 not spoil a tale in repeating it. Thus many novelties 

 that flower so amazingly in the catalogues make but 

 a poor show in the garden, and after one year's trial 



