lO 



GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



roots nourished in four flower-pots, its leaves 

 curtaining the small windows, with their up- 

 per surface laid close against the glass. The 

 old human inmate of the room *' keeps her- 

 self happy by reading her Bible and loving 

 her ivy !" — The plant and its poor owner 

 seeking the light together, and finding it — 

 even, in a tenement house — with faces 

 " pressed close to the glass." 



Yes, for such people, '' ever3^thing grows." 

 Their loving skill — for I doubt if real love 

 can long be ignorant — has a power of coax- 

 ing which finds its way to the very heart of 

 a cutting, and makes seeds yield up their 

 treasures with a precisioii and promptness 

 quite distracting to ordinary mortals, — those 

 easy, hopeful, blunderers who plant sweet 

 peas on the top of the ground rather late, 

 and petunias an inch deep, rather early ; and 

 comfortably bestow all their failures at the 

 seedman's door. 



But real love has other skill than this; 

 and can (somehow) draw gold-value from a 

 purse of coppers, and fetch double-distilled 



