246 THE NEW GARDENING 



Have you fallen permanently under the spell of garden- 

 ing ? Has the flower-fever taken possession of your 

 heart and mind ? If so, you may be able to form an idea 

 of what it means to an untutored soul. You will sympa- 

 thize rather than blame if you see that all sense of pro- 

 portion is completely lost ; you will smile indulgently if 

 you see that the gardener measures all the people with 

 whom he comes in contact by one unvarying standard 

 the degree of their knowledge of plants. 



Perhaps you are an employer of gardeners. You may 

 have a large garden with a staff of men to keep it in 

 order, working under the control of a head gardener. If 

 this man is a typical gardener and gardeners vary little 

 he will interest you deeply. He will present you with 

 a curious character-study. He will be surpassingly 

 patient over minute details in connection with his daily 

 work, and amazingly impatient under the most gentle 

 criticism from a non-gardener. He will be humble in the 

 presence of his plants and arrogant in that of his em- 

 ployer. He will possess a mine of information about the 

 cultural requirements of plants, and be as ignorant as 

 a child about the affairs of the world. He will give un- 

 bounded respect to an authority of his own class on 

 Grape-growing, and treat with ill-concealed contempt a 

 great financier or educationist who confesses to ignorance 

 of Vines. He will take everything connected with him- 

 self and his work in a spirit of appalling seriousness, and 

 dismiss as trivial the weightiest state affairs. He will be 

 at once intelligent and stupid, cheerful and morose. 

 First and last he will be deeply interested in his work, 

 and filled to the brim with the conviction that he was 

 sent into the world expressly to show how it should be 

 done. He will be irritatingly conceited. He will never 

 be satisfied with the amount of assistance which he has. 



