INTRODUCTION TO A tfERN PARADISE AT HOME. 



where they grow ; and there would be that 

 demand if the poor knew more about these ex- 

 quisite plants. 



Ferns will grow where flowering plants would 

 perish. They require moisture and shade not 

 stagnant, but percolating moisture. Place them 

 where you will on the floor, on the table of a 

 dimly-lighted room, on the sunless window-sill, in 

 a shady corner anywhere, and they will grow 

 and develope, unrolling their charming fronds, and 

 exhibiting their sweet feathery forms with all 

 their natural grace in the presence of squalor arid 

 misery. The poor seamstress painfully working 

 in yon ill-lighted garret, where the glorious sun 

 never comes, might perhaps have shed bitter tears 

 over the withered flower that all her care had 

 failed to rear ! But a Fern would grow where 

 her flower had died, would smile upon her with 

 its mute, flowerless smile, would live in the dark 

 light of her attic window, and, unfolding its 

 fronds day by day, would assume its most graceful 

 and most beautiful form even in the presence of a 

 poor seamstress. 



But it is not only the poor who have to live in 



57 



