THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



To dwellers in Towns the sight of flowers in the streets 

 is like a breath of the country. The long line of flower- 

 sellers in the High Street, Kensington, one group of 

 women in Piccadilly Circus, in Oxford Circus, in other 

 spots where the place of their flower baskets brightens 

 all the neighbourhood, are doctors, though they do not 

 know it, of high degree. They bring the message of the 

 changing year. They are a perpetual flower calendar, 

 people to whom a reverence is due. One looks in Picca- 

 dilly Circus for the first Snowdrops, the little knots of 

 their delicate white faces peering over the edge of the 

 flower baskets. From the tops of omnibuses the first 

 Violets are seen. Anemones have their turn, and 

 Mimosa, and Cowslips, and Roses soon glow in the 

 midst of the traffic, and elegant Carnations in their 

 silver grass, and great piles of Asters. So we may read 

 the year. All through the grey and desolate Winter 

 these flower women hold their own, through cold and 

 rain, and pale Winter sun they keep the day alive with the 

 glowing colours of flowers. I often wonder, as I see 

 them sit there so patiently, if they know the joy they 

 give the passer-by, or if they are more like the rocks on 

 whom flowers grow by nature. They are a curious race, 

 these flower- women, untidy, with a screw of hair twisted 

 up under a battered hat of black straw, with faded 

 shawls wrapped round them, and the weapons of their 

 craft arranged about them jam jars of water, wire, 

 bass, rows of little sticks on the end of which button- 

 holes are stuck. And they have wonderful contri- 

 vances for keeping their money, ancient purses rusty 

 like many of themselves, in which greasy pennies and 

 wet sixpences wallow in litters of dirty paper. I would 

 not vouch for the truth of all they say, for it would ap- 

 pear from their words that every flower in their baskets 

 is but just picked, or only that second from the market. 



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