86 A BOOK ABOUT TEE GARDEN. 



which, nevertheless, has achieved to-day the third 

 prize for window-plants. 



Then conies a friendly fusion of exhibitors. The 

 owner of the soil has hearty words for that occupier 

 who proves to-day that he is not abusing it, and whose 

 neat garden proclaims to the landlord, every time he 

 passes in his carriage, industry, happiness, and the 

 rent gradually accumulating in the recesses of an 

 old stocking. Again I say it is a goodly sight. The 

 people of a village ought to be as one family, and 

 to-day they seem to be so ; and when the band of our 

 Volunteer Eiflemen a good band, too, though the 

 performer on the trombone might be accounted some- 

 what obese for military evolutions concludes with 

 " God Save the Queen," we feel every one of us that 

 we have met for good, that there are refreshments in 

 life which can cheer and strengthen for many a 

 toilsome day, and that the surest purest happiness is 

 that of men working with the means which are at 

 hand so ample and so apt, when charity seeks them 

 to make those around them happy. To some it is, 

 doubtless, an act of self-denial to give up a day to a 

 village show, but the recompense, even here, is sure. 

 Is it not ever so ? I remember to have heard from 

 an elderly colonel of my acquaintance that, when a 

 young man, he was in the habit of going frequently 

 for tea and piquet with an invalid aunt, because he 

 thought it his duty. It was an awful bore at first, he 

 said, but he afterwards found in his kinswoman a 

 most genial companion and excellent friend. "I 

 learned more wisdom from that gentle sufferer," he 

 told me, with an earnest thankfulness, " than could. 



