Annuals 



Chief Justice, Executioner, and Lord High Every- 

 thing Else. The paid gardener is Chief of Police, 

 Nurse, and Conductor of the State Creche. 



My garden is so situated that the world and 

 the kingdoms thereof lie outside and beyond, and, 

 therefore, it must be a microcosm, a world in little, 

 reaching not outward and beyond, but, like the 

 pines, directly upwards. That is a limitation that 

 makes excellence both easier and more difficult ; 

 easier, because the dimensions of the dream are 

 smaller ; more difficult because the standard and 

 the test are not to be had for the mere mounting 

 to an open place. There is a danger in the pines 

 as a background, for they give such a glow to 

 colour that even discord and disharmony will look 

 well, and even failure can give something of the 

 pride and triumph of success. There is the same 

 peril in a garden so enclosed as there is in the 

 mysticism of the poets who seem to lose their 

 sense of the visible world — and to devise systems 

 which are logically perfect though they have no 

 life. So might a garden, without becoming con- 

 ventional, suffer by the imposition of a new con- 

 vention and become as stiff and frigid, though not 

 quite so ugly as the old gardens of beds and patterns. 

 Another danger is the acceptance of failure and 

 the " good enough " as " good." That has a 

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