THE GARDENERS DREAM. 15 



your writing table, brightened your room throughout 

 the day. Tired with a long correspondence and other 

 business, you refreshed your spirit with a survey of 

 your little greenhouse, gay with Chrysanthemums, 

 with those Hybrid Pelargoniums, which recall so 

 pleasantly dear, quaint, old Donald Beaton, with 

 Epacris, Primula, and Fuchsia, and sweet with Violets, 

 Mignonette, Genista, and Heliotrope. At luncheon 

 you feasted on the half of a Marechal de la Cour Pear, 

 whose growth you had watched for weeks, and which 

 weighed 18oz. when it fell. In the afternoon you 

 opened, with the keen, glad interest which a school- 

 boy feels when he cuts the string of his hamper from 

 home, a bundle of new Eose-trees from one of the 

 great nurseries, disposed them in your rosarium, 

 and helped to plant. Then you superintended the 

 arrangement of your small winter garden, the Thujas, 

 Aucubas, Gold and Silver Hollies, Arabis, Ivies, and 

 Heaths, which you keep in pots for the purpose, and 

 which are to ' cheer the ungenial day,' until the Snow- 

 drop and Crocus, the Tulip and the Hyacinth, 

 proclaim, as heralds, another festival of flowers. 

 Then, having looked into your fruit-room, and 

 counted, like a miser, your golden store; having 

 glanced with a paternal pride over your numerous 

 progeny of ' nursery ' stock, the rising generation of 

 dandies and belles, who are to rule the beau-rnonde 

 next year, you went into your vinery, and cut those 

 grand bunches of Muscats and Hamburghs, which not 

 only made you a dessert fit for an emperor, but, taken 

 in part to a sick neighbour, brought you a far greater 

 luxury 'the luxury of doing good.' 



