116 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



carry the very essence of wisdom as applied to life. Nor could 

 they be truer or more vital than as we apply them to the great 

 body of garden-loving men and women over this country. Rich 

 and poor, bond or free, when we garden we are at the sam« 

 work; we work with the same great elements; we work in faith 

 that the seasons will still roll for us and for our sowings and 

 plantings. There is no other such meeting-ground; there is no 

 community of interest such as this of gardens. "Gardening," 

 said Sir William Temple long ago, "is an occupation for which 

 no man is too high or too low." There is common ground here 

 for all classes, all kinds of human beings, yes, for all races of men. 

 Someone wrote me lately, "I cling to the belief that if anything 

 can stop the ever-impending war between labor and capital it 

 is the mutual forbearance that comes from just such common 

 interests as love of flowers." Do you remember in The Moonstone, 

 by Wilkie Collins, those pleasant interludes in the work of 

 finding the criminal, when Sergeant Cuff the renowned detec- 

 tive, and Mr. Begbie the gardener, held earnest converse 

 together? And what were their topics? Whether the white 

 moss-rose did or did not require to be budded on the dog-rose 

 to make it grow well; and whether grass or gravel walks were 

 best for the rose-garden. Wide apart in station, far from each 

 other in vocation, here these two were as brothers. 



If I may be allowed here a more personal word, opposite 

 this is the picture of one who works with and for me in our 

 garden. As I look at this good portrait of a fine and useful man, 

 I can read his thoughts at the instant this picture was made. 

 Here they are. "As soon as this is over I must tie up this fallen 

 bloom of peony Marie Jacquin that is on the grass." That must 

 have been my own intention too. And I pity those fortunate 

 in owning land sufficient to entail a gardener, whose men do 

 not sympathize with them in the work common to both. Yet 



