HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



grass, and fields, and woods, as to draw them 

 irresistibly into companionship. Such men 

 feel the confinement of a city like a prison. 

 They are restive under its restraint. The grass 

 of an area patch of greensward kindles their 

 love into flame. They linger by florists' doors, 

 drawn and held by a magnetism they cannot 

 explain, and which they make no effort to re- 

 sist. They are not necessarily amateurs, in 

 the ordinary sense of that term. I think they 

 are apt to be passionate lovers of only a few, 

 and those the commonest flowers — flowers 

 whose sweet home-names reach a key, at whose 

 touch all their sympathies respond. 



They laugh at the florist's fondness for a 

 well-rounded hollyhock, or a true-petalled tulip, 

 and admire as fondly the half-developed speci- 

 mens, the careless growth of cast-away plants, 

 or the accidental thrust of some misshapen bud 

 or bulb. I suspect I am to be ranked with 

 these; my purchase of an ox-eye daisy on the 

 streets of Paris will have already damaged my 

 reputation past hope, in the eyes of the amateur 

 florists. If these good people could see the 

 homely company of plants that is gathered 

 every winter in my library window, they would 

 be shocked still farther. 



There is a careless group of the most com- 



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