ET CETERA. 105 



Not very good, I fear, and yet something can be done. 



Perhaps she has a young brother who has not yet 

 passed the " mud-pie " stage of boyhood. If so, how 

 would it do to send him to a bank of good stiff clay, with 

 two or three blocks of proper size and shape, and let him 

 try his art in the line of useful pottery ? If well-worked 

 clay were plastered about one-fourth of an inch thick over 

 such blocks, and then dried in the sun or baked in an 

 oven, perhaps the pots would render her good service. 

 At any rate such rude pottery has the odor of antiquity 

 and the sanction of long and varied usage. 



Another possible substitute, equally rude and ancient, 

 as a use of osier, is suggested by Spenser's lines : 



"Each a little wicker-basket had, 

 Made of fine twigs, entrailed curiously." 



Little or large, and of any form desired, cradles for her 

 plants your friend can easily make of these fine twigs 

 alone, "entrailed curiously." Or, taking strips of com- 

 pact moss or well-matted sod and cutting them to the 

 proper shape, she can bind them firmly together with 

 wicker-work of the simplest kind, and thus have pots 

 porous enough for the plants and green enough for any 

 greenery. When such vegetable pots have decayed, they 

 will doubtless be filled with roots, like the balls of earth 

 in common pots, and need only a new wrapping of osier 

 and green. 



As a last resort, she may use the tin cans in which fruit 

 has been preserved. They are without doubt more con- 

 venient for her than suitable for her plants. But if pro- 

 vided with an inch of gravel and charcoal at the bottom 

 for drainage, besides one or two apertures a fourth of an 

 inch in diameter, they will serve well for the Ivy, Ficus 

 repens, and the like, and may be tolerable for her more 

 delicate plants. But let us hope that some enterprising 

 tradesman of her neighborhood may soon become inter- 



