22 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



as satisfactorily in walled cities as in sodden 

 orchards or on spongy lawns better, perhaps, 

 because there we miss the discouragement of 

 actual contact with the unlovely disintegrations 

 that are all too evident in St Valentine's 

 weather ! Perhaps it was for plan-making 

 "that Februarys are made, after all ! They 

 are near enough to the beginning of things to 

 encourage a free outlook, and not too far from 

 other things to let us forget the failures and 

 successes, the disappointments and achieve- 

 ments of the past. A gardener is, as Alfred 

 Austin reminds us, a true Dogberry, " a man 

 that hath had losses." He is also one who has 

 known "the purest of human pleasures," and 

 so he stands in the waxing strength of the 

 February sunlight, remembering the things he 

 promised himself not to forget, but which he 

 will forget when he sees the first daffodil, and 

 it is already too late to say, " This year thus 

 and so shall be done." 



I write my name large in the list of those 

 who most gratefully acknowledge their debt to 



writers of books. I No ! I renounce the 



difficult joy it would be to try to say what I 

 owe to the printed page, and I hasten on to 



