REVIEW AND INFERENCES. 35 



From the gentle-bred child of a luxurious home, down 

 to the filth of your twenty-five pfennigs meal cellars of 

 out-of-the-way Hamburg. I know the song. I know 

 the shriek of my profession. I know the contempt you 

 hold us in, intentionally or unintentionally. I con- 

 demn you alike, you who are so depraved as to lower a 

 man lower than your god in heaven or your devil in 

 hell will ever forgive -you for. Don't you make me eat 

 in the company of the coachman, a man bred low and 

 looking low? Do you not cast me into a bunch with the 

 bootblack and barber? Me, us, followers of an art, the 

 adherents of an edifying profession? If you intend to 

 crown your head with a stovepipe to-morrow, Sunday, 

 and listen to your parson: turn on your heel, you feigner, 

 and listen to a sermon of your conscience, the conscience 

 feeding on plant-worship. Sit on your back-porch 

 amongst your trailing climbers, and be not-at-home to 

 anybody but yourself for a couple of hours. If you are 

 asked to contribute to the bible-society, for the lying 

 farce of foreign mission, contemplate, dear fellow-man, 

 that there is no greater vice belying this crust of miffy 

 civilization than the criminal ways of missionary work. 

 Mission at home, that is the carefully avoided topic. 

 Let the heathens die in their native happiness; you 

 only render them unfit to enjoy their existence. But 

 look to the cleansing of you own household. I address 

 every employer of a gardener, most of any the general 

 run of nurserymen, when I ask him to devote one frac- 

 tion of an hour for every day in one week only to the 

 condition his employee is in. And, returning to you, 

 patrons of orchid culture, you have engaged in your 

 service the cream of the cultivating branch of our pro- 

 fession. Every plant of yours needs special judgment, 

 every pot different treatment, every house different 



