2 8o A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



life-factor, I wish it could enter into the heart 

 of every householder that it is his duty to plant 

 as if change were the one thing that would 

 never come, and that to make the outside of 

 his house attractive is as much his duty as 

 to pay his water-rates or poll-tax. What if 

 the house is only a rented one ? An ampe- 

 lopsis may be pulled up in an afternoon's 

 ramble, which will change the whole aspect 

 of the porch against which it is set, and turn 

 the house into a home. If I were a Society 

 for the Improvement of Public Morals I 

 should issue as Order No. i, an edict com- 

 pelling every citizen of the republic without 

 any of the exemptions of women and idiots 

 which our polite laws sometimes make to 

 plant a tree or a shrub every year of their 

 lives. If I were the Autocrat of all the 

 Russias, a ukase should go forth that, under 

 pain of banishment to some desert in which 

 no scantiest herbage would grow, every 

 second tree should be a pine : every third 

 tree an oak, and no woman should be con- 

 sidered marriageable until she had six hem- 

 locks and six birch - trees to her credit. 

 Legacies from lost uncles in India should, 



