A NEW OUTLOOK 



as I try to understand them, it will do wonders for them ? Oct. 

 Of course the intermittent heart-beat at sixty-five is a 

 factor that has to be considered, but I protest against 

 the morbidity that prompts a man to lie awake o' nights 

 ringing the changes on i, 2, 3, o, o, 4, 5, and i, o, o, 

 2, o, 3, 4, 5, when he has such a delicious problem to 

 solve as the selection of his Tulips for next spring's 

 flowering. To think, too, of a person worrying over 

 neuritis when he can buy a beautiful, illustrated book 

 of shrubs for a shilling, and plan new beds for autumn 

 making ! Personally, when I have neurotic pangs I 

 employ a muscular masseur to knead me, and while he 

 is thus engaged (getting very hot, I observe, in his con- 

 suming earnestness), I placidly peruse the descriptions 

 in the new Rose catalogues, and I think what admirable 

 writers there are among those who draw up nursery- 

 men's catalogues. How they would excel as novelists, 

 with their wonderful powers of description, gifts of ima- 

 gination, and knowledge of humanity ! 



What I particularly want to say to the sensitive soul 

 is this : Where lies the justification for depression when 

 you know quite well that Nature works in a never-ceasing 

 round ? Who can feel grieved at the fall of the leaf 

 when he learns that clever device which the twig has of 

 ripening and hardening under the stalk, and sees that 

 the same mellowing process which squeezes the leaf off 

 swells up the apparently lifeless buds that are to give 

 foliage and blossom next year ? As well mourn over 

 the moulting of a fowl. While the stems of your her- 

 baceous plants, and of your Raspberries, are dying, the 

 crowns on the rootstocks below are thickening. As 

 the Gladiolus foliage withers above ground a new corm 

 superimposes itself on the old one below. You take 

 Apples and Pears from the trees, but you leave on them, 

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