CHAPTER XIV. THE PLEASURES OF A SMALL GREENHOUSE 



L The Greenhouse in the Snow 



By L. H. Bailey 



T IS in the dead of winter that the greenhouse is at its best, 

 for then is the contrast of life and death the greatest. Just 

 beyond the Hving tender leaf— separated only by the slender 

 film of the pane — is the whiteness and silence of the 

 midwinter. You stand under .the arching roof and look away 

 into the bare, blue depths where only stars hang their cold, faint lights. The 

 bald outlines of an overhanging tree are projected against the sky with the 

 sharpness of the figures of cut glass. Branches creak and snap as they 

 move stiffly in the wind. White drifts show against the panes. Icicles 

 glisten from the gutters. Bits of ice are hurled from trees and cornice, and 

 they crinkle and tinkle over the frozen snow. In the short, sharp days the 

 fences protrude from a waste of drift and riffle, and the dead fretwork of 

 weed-stems suggests a long-lost summer. There, a finger's-breadth away, 

 the temperature is far below zero ; here is the warmth and snugness of a 

 nook of summer. 



This is the transcendent merit of a greenhouse — the sense of mastery 

 over the forces of nature. It is an oasis in one's life as well as in the 

 winter. You have dominion. 



But this dominion does not stop with the mere satisfaction of a conscious- 

 ness of power. These tender things, with all their living processes in root, 

 and stem, and leaf, are dependent wholly on you for their very existence. 

 One minute of carelessness or neglect and all their loveliness collapses in 

 the blackness of death. How often have we seen the farmer pay a visit to 

 the stable at bedtime to see that the animals are snug and warm for the 

 night, stroking each confiding face as it raised at his approach ! And how 

 often have we seen the same affectionate care of the gardener, who stroked 

 his plants and tenderly turned and shifted the pots, when the night wind 

 hurled the frost against the panes ! It is worth the while to have a place 

 for the affection of things that are not human. 



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