JANUARY 287 



a hundred others jostling the honest snapdragons 

 and hybrid pentstemons, and in the front there blazed 

 petunias, pelargoniums, stocks, marigolds, and count- 

 less more varieties of tender things crowding the 

 pansies and the campanulas and the funkias to their 

 undeserved extinction. In the whole there was no 

 repose, no nature, no suggestion of past beauty or 

 coming glow which makes the herbaceous garden 

 in its natural state a real companion, with its 

 promise of life and its threat of death as real as 

 any of our own, and as sad or as happy. I do not 

 want that sort of perennial border, but I am obliged 

 to confess that a little judicious supplement in late 

 spring and early summer with harmonious additions 

 is necessary for the after-appearance of the garden 

 picture. 



Jan. 25. I have just sent off to a friend in town 

 a glorious box of flowers which might rejoice the 

 heart of a misanthrope. It was one of those large 

 dressmaker's boxes in which they send home gowns, 

 and one feels no small degree of pride in the power 

 to fill so considerable a receptacle at this time of 

 year. " Very good for little people," says Sterculus, 

 hugging himself with natural pride, as he sees the 

 basketful of blooms of which the greenhouse is 

 reft to do him honour in the metropolis, as he 

 thinks. I find there is only one way of packing 

 flowers to ensure their arriving in a perfectly fresh 

 condition. They are cut several hours before they 

 are wanted, or perhaps even overnight, and placed 

 in large bowls of water, so that they may absorb all 

 they can before the journey. Then the stems are 

 dried, and each variety is tied up in a good-sized 



