86 THE ROSE. 



no longer disgrace an enlightened age ; but 

 beyond the contribution of this occasional 

 homily, it is, of course, no affair of ours. 

 Each man assures his neighbor that the pro- 

 cess of desiccation is quite easy, and the art 

 of deodorizing almost nice ; but nobody 'goes 

 in. ' The reader, I have no doubt, has with 

 me had large experience of this perversity in 

 neighbors, and ofttimes has been perplexed 

 and pained by their dogged strange reluc- 

 tance to follow the very best advice. There 

 was at Cambridge, some thirty years ago, an 

 insolent, foul-mouthed, pugnacious sweep, 

 who escaped for two terms the sublime lick- 

 ing which he 'annexed' finally, because no 

 one liked to tackle the soot. There were 

 scores of undergraduates to whom pugilism 

 was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, who 

 had the power and the desire to punish his 

 impudence, but they thought of the close 

 wrestle they reflected on the 'hug,' and 

 left him. To drop metaphor, there is no 

 more valuable manure; but it is, from cir- 

 cumstances which require no explanation, 

 more suitable for the farm than the garden, 

 especially as we have a substitute [farm -yard 

 manure] quite as efficacious, and far more 

 convenient and agreeable in use." * 



* " A Book about Roses," S. Reynolds Hole. 



