THE SIX OF SPADES. 193 



failures, and reverses ; we are not oblivious of the 

 mealy-bug, red-spider, wire-worm, cockroach, earwig, 

 beetle, caterpillar, snail, and slug ; we are familiar 

 with mildew, canker, and blight ; we know that the 

 mellow ouzel, fluting in the elm, has wet his whistle, 

 and proposes to wet it again, with our cherries and 

 other fruit ; we have suffered all the ills which horti- 

 culture is heir to, from a thunderstorm to a nibbling 

 mouse ; but I maintain that a garden, well cared for, 

 has such an infinite variety of charms, that these 

 minute solicitudes (bah ! grunts the cynic he calls a 

 thunderstorm a minute solicitude) only enhance its 

 joys ; and that there is no month in the year, no day 

 in the week, in which (always supposing the existence 

 of "a bit o' glass") there is not something new, 

 something beautiful, to interest and to please. 



Take, for example, this November month in which, 

 so Frenchmen say, we rush in crowds to our trees for 

 suspension, and to our streams for submersion, with 

 a wild disdain of life ; and then let me tell you, my 

 brothers of the spade, what pleasure, and what profit 

 also, I have had this day from my garden. 



Coming this morning from our matin service, leav- 

 ing our altar bright and fragrant, as, thanks to you, 

 my friends, it ever is, with the loveliest flowers which 

 art can rear, the sweetest, purest offering, surely, that 

 we can return to Him, 



" Whose breath perfumes them, and whose pencil paints," 



I cut a bouquet of the last roses of autumn (Dijon's 



Glory, generous Jules 'Margottin, brave Marechal 



14 



