THE NEW GARDENER 245 



place ; but those who know him best will be the first to 

 admit that he has done great work in his day, and to 

 hope that his successor will have at least a portion of his 

 native worth. 



The old gardener was first and foremost a plant-lover. 

 Plant-love knows neither class nor age. It seizes on the 

 boy fresh from the village school as firmly as on the 

 society woman who has grown worn and weary with the 

 social whirl. Catching this boy (who, it is needless to 

 remark, is entirely uneducated, since village schooldom 

 merely crams in crude masses of information as pullets 

 are crammed for market, and does nothing to form the 

 mind), catching him at an impressionable age, it fastens 

 on him a grip which grows tighter with the years. He 

 goes into a gentleman's garden with some force at work 

 within him that he cannot understand or define. He 

 works at drudging tasks. As he grows up he learns to 

 handle plants to propagate them, pot them, prune 

 them. He becomes absorbed in them. The Grapes that 

 he thins, the Apple trees which he prunes, the Roses 

 that he buds, become his all in all. In an abstracted way 

 he presently goes courting. After a lapse of years he 

 disconnectedly realizes that children are growing up 

 around him. But nor sweetheart, nor wife, nor bairns 

 stand first in his inmost thoughts. His plants have 

 always the warmest corners in his heart. 



Figure to yourself an elementary being, with untrained 

 mind, with unformed tastes, with all the passions and 

 infirmities of primitive humanity, becoming obsessed 

 with plant-love. Must he not develop into something 

 abnormal ? 



You who read, an educated person, do you know what 

 plant-love is : how it permeates the whole being, in- 

 fluences the entire character, makes of you a bondman ? 



