THE SEED-BED 



A request for some plants came to me 

 last autumn from the baggage-master of a 

 railroad station some twenty miles from us, 

 who, by the boxes of shrubs and plants 

 that came to me, inferred that I might 

 have some to spare. I learned that all this 

 man's spare time was spent in his little 

 garden plot, so great was his love of 

 flowers. I know, too, a village expressman 

 (another whom nature intended for a gar- 

 dener), whose little plot of ground is always 

 a mass of beauty. He has a surprising 

 variety of plants, and every one is a fine 

 specimen of its kind. His Anemone Ja- 

 jjonica alba are the finest I have ever seen, 

 each one sending up perhaps a dozen slen- 

 der stalks of the beautiful flowers. I have 

 had great difficulty with this plant and have 

 lost dozens of them. I always drive very 

 slowly by the expressman's garden, burning 

 with envy and wondering how he does it. 

 In fact, it was only last year that I had 

 my first success with these obdurate plants. 



61 



