106 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



admiration from several of the bigger boys, and they 

 proceeded at once to demonstrate their affection by 

 administering a variety of liquid manures, such as 

 blacking, sour beer, and mustard, which they assured 

 me, on the authority of gardeners at home, who had 

 made the fuchsia their special study, would cause an 

 immediate and gigantic growth. But when they pro- 

 ceeded, "according" (so they said) "to the invariable 

 practice at Kew Gardens, and to the principles laid 

 down by Dr. Lindley," to distribute a fire-shovel of 

 hot cinders around my poor little plant, credulity gave 

 place to bitter tears ; and though I had the sub- 

 sequent satisfaction of definitely discomfiting in five 

 rounds a young gentleman, who thought to improve 

 the occasion by addressing me as a " sniffling softy," 

 I took heart no more, during my scholastic term, to 

 exhibit single specimens in pots. 



In the groves of Academus (to use that beautiful 

 diction, which is a trifle more appropriate to the 

 groves of Blarney) there prevailed, floriculturally 

 speaking, as remarkable a dearth as dreariness. 

 Beneath the trees of those renowned plantations, 

 which dip their metaphorical branches in the limpid 

 waters of Tsis and of Cam, we grew nothing but scarlet- 

 runners (undergraduates in hunting costume, swiftly 

 darting from quadrangle and cloister to avoid collegiate 

 and proctorial authorities) ; a few stocks (the fresh- 

 men wore them, when there was not the same 

 connection as now between a Buckle and Civiliza- 

 tion); and a large assortment of bachelors' buttons 

 (straps being the fashion in those days, and wrist- 

 studs unrevealed). 



