HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 305 



Flowers. 



THERE is a class of men who gravitate to the 

 country by a pure necessity of their nature ; 

 who have such ineradicable love for springing grass, 

 and fields, and woods, as to draw them irresistibly 

 into companionship. Such men feel the confinement 

 of a city like a prison. They are restive under its 

 restraint. The grass of an area patch of greensward 

 kindles their love into flame. They linger by florists' 

 doors, drawn and held by a magnetism they cannot 

 explain, and which they make no effort to resist. 

 They are not necessarily amateurs, in the ordinary 

 sense of that term. I think they are apt to be pas- 

 sionate lovers of only a few, and those the commonest 

 flowers flowers whose sweeet home-names reach a 

 key, at whose touch all their sympathies respond. 



They laugh at the florist's fondness for a well 

 rounded holly-hock, or a true-petalled tulip, and ad- 

 mire as fondly the half-developed specimens, the 

 careless growth of cast-away plants, or the accidental 

 thrust of some misshapen bud or bulb. I suspect I 

 am to be ranked with these ; my purchase of an ox- 

 eye daisy on the streets of Paris will have already 

 damaged my reputation past hope, in the eyes of 

 the amateur florists. If these good people could 

 eee the homely company of plants that is gathered 



