36 ORCHID HYBRIDS. 



adaptation to contrary conditions. Do you pay your 

 man anyways near what he ought to receive? If you 

 value your plants by ciphers of three, four places, how 

 much is the caring of them worth in comparison? Do 

 not answer me that you can get dozens of men for the 

 part of one that you employ. You know with me that 

 there is something entirely wrong in the parceling out 

 of this world's gifts, and if it is perhaps in my interest 

 to look for a change, it may be in yours to be anxious 

 about a continuation. If you decide thus, you give the 

 rope around our necks another twist, and more narrow 

 than before will be the crack admitting healthful air 

 into our systems. 



Out on the porch before my office door' lies my dog; 

 Prince is his name, and princely are his ways. To 

 enumerate his traits would be imposing upon my 

 readers' time. Let it suffice with the statement that 

 he is as intelligent as he is brave, as noble as he 

 is useful. Yet this very dog was raised (by the man 

 who left him with me when he emigrated to a worse 

 country) with nothing but bran and scraps falling 

 off the table of a batchelor prospector and pioneer. Not 

 that Prince was not worth any better food; no, it was 

 all his master was able to afford for the companion of 

 his lonely life. What the dog is amongst animals, that 

 is the gardener amongst men: his most faithful com- 

 panion, his most sincere servant. You can raise either 

 of them on the bran of your wheat or on the scraps of 

 your table; they are grateful and thrive under such con- 

 ditions. But, fellow-men of flesh and bone, would you 

 face your dog if you fed him thus? Do not try to inform 

 me about numerous curs, such news has grown stale 

 already with the linnets on my roof. In the town which 

 I overlook from my window they drop occasionally scraps 



