164 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



weather or not ! It don't matter that one would 

 mightily prefer just to sit down in the now swift, shal- 

 low stream of the limpid Wye the day long, listening 

 (if it could be) to sweet music in the distance, and 

 having bird's-eye and bottled perry within reach. It 

 don't matter that the prevailing heat is such — (Bother 

 the comet who will sweep his tail so near to our gasping 

 planet!) — that one could with advantage, as Sidney 

 Smith said, "get out of one's flesh and sit in one's 

 bones for half-an-hour ;" but you see, gentle reader, 

 that when one's mind gets on the fret, 'tis like one's 

 wife's talk, or young pop : it must froth over, under 

 risk of an explosion. I am anxious to tell you the 

 result of my experiments : first, as respects the pelar- 

 gonium seedlings, the history of whose parentage I gave 

 you in a former number. A few have flowered. With 

 what keen anxiety, and almost hourly visits, did one not 

 watch the d^but of that first blossom ! It was all I 

 could do to refrain from opening it, vi et armis, when 

 the floret had really begun to extricate its petals from 

 the enclosing grasp of the calyx points. I think old 

 Melon did take a surreptitious peep by the help of the 

 grape-scissors, for I cannot otherwise account for sundry 

 marks upon the flower when it did appear, which looked 

 far more like bruising caused by human interference 

 than simple veining due to Nature's pencil. How 

 grievously disappointed I was to find that the flower I 

 had produced by dint of so much painful care, actually 

 came out identical, to all appearance, with one of the 

 commonest sorts that old women indulge with a broken 

 teapot, in their cottage window. " Good-bye," said I at 

 once, with Celtic perseverance, " to this fun ; " but 

 behold I the next in size and tint is an eminent triumph, 



