INSTANCES OF SUCCESS 309 



with extremely low cost of production, while he has 

 himself developed into a business man of exceptional 

 shrewdness and force of character. 



Many more such stories could be told, but I must 

 now content myself with the following : 



Thirty years ago, or thereabouts, there lived in 

 Scotland a certain draper who, in addition to being a 

 successful business man, had a strong attachment for 

 flowers, and was secretary of a local horticultural 

 society. For some years he was content to regard 

 flowers in the light of a hobby, but his devotion thereto 

 became at last so strong that he gave up his business 

 in Scotland, and came to London to see if he could not 

 earn a livelihood at the more congenial pursuit of 

 flower production. He took over a nursery garden ; 

 but his business instincts had convinced him that it 

 was necessary, not only to grow attractive flowers, but 

 to market them in such a way that their natural beauty 

 would be fully preserved and shown off to the best 

 advantage. Discarding, therefore, the old-fashioned 

 style of tying up the flowers into round bunches, or 

 * nosegays,' he adopted the then novel method of 

 placing them flat in long boxes, after the fashion of 

 'sprays,' so that all the flowers were presented the 

 same way, and there was no danger of any one of them 

 being crushed by the others. On the top of the flowers 

 thus arranged he fixed a small piece of cane, slightly 

 longer than the breadth of the box, in order to prevent 

 them from moving about during transit. 



This improved method was the acme of simplicity, 

 but the effect especially in the packing of narcissi, to 

 which the trader in question devoted particular attention 

 was that the boxes of flowers so arranged had an 

 immediate success on Covent Garden Market. The 

 innovation amounted, in fact, almost to a revolution in 



