154 AUGUST 



annuals sown about the end of this month and 

 transplanted before the winter to beds prepared 

 for them. Autumn-sown annuals such as these 

 certainly blossom more strongly and profusely and 

 over a longer season than those reserved for spring 

 sowing, but, of course, the difficulty lies in tiding 

 them safely through the frosts of December and 

 January, which may destroy them utterly. I have 

 never made any serious attempt at this system, 

 though some of my best annuals in the mixed 

 borders come from autumn-sown seed of their own 

 distributing. I have also had plants of candytuft 

 which have bloomed throughout a summer and 

 survived the following winter, and have made 

 such hard wood through old age that their stems 

 resembled the rugged bark of a young maple 

 sapling. 



Aug. /p. I am very fond of dog stories, and 

 always read with much interest those which appear 

 from time to time in the Spectator. I have more 

 than once sent dog stories of my own to the editor 

 of that paper, but he has never had the discern- 

 ment to print them. Jim was rude enough once 

 to suggest that they were too good even for the 

 Spectator, but they are true nevertheless. I 

 have only had two really human dogs who were 

 so absolutely of us that they did not even know 

 that they were dogs, or, if possibly they knew, 

 would not acknowledge the fact. One of these 

 was a mongrel fox-terrier named Joe, and so well 

 did he understand all our conversation that when 

 we did not wish him to know our plans we were 

 forced to speak in Spanish, for he was quite good 



