CHAPTER VI 

 THE WHITE ROCKERY (continued) 



GARDENERS have been a subject very common in 

 literature, and one might easily write many new 

 things about them, even at this late date. Here they 

 occur in great abundance ; we have every description 

 of gardener ; and the average of excellence is high. 

 For the lowest, most despicable class one must seek 

 in the suburbs of cities. In those places unskilled 

 labourers will trample and destroy for you at three 

 shillings and sixpence a day. They call themselves 

 jobbing gardeners. If energetic as well as ignorant, 

 they will earn their money by wholesale ruin and 

 malpractice ; if merely lazy vagabonds, as is more 

 often the case, they will spend most of their time 

 at the kitchen door, and do little harm except to 

 the minds of your serving-maidens. I have escaped 

 beyond the dreadful radius of the jobbers, into a 

 county where gardeners may be ignorant, but they 

 are honest. Here we are not afraid of work, and 

 even the humblest among us is a real gardener, not 

 a loafing sham, who has neither probity nor know- 

 ledge nor self-respect to justify his existence. Of 

 course, human nature persists, and our gardeners 

 have their fads and fancies, their negligences and 



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