Jamar, 16, 187?. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



TO OUR READERS. 



[Scene. — A room in Fleet Street; two library tables, fireplace between them. On the hearthrug before 

 that fireplace the Spirit of the Journal of Horticulture, frowning as darkly as that benign 

 Spirit can frown.] 



The Spirit soliloquises : — 



" There is no merit in being old, as all my female friends long since concluded. If there 

 were any such merit, then would I inconvenience one who says that he is my senior. I am 

 two centuries and a half of weeks more aged than he. Let that pass, and let the palm be 

 given to the best. 



" Another' year has concluded, another of my volumes is completed ; and I ask from all 

 my friends that heart-gladdening praise now before me — 'You have been useful to many 

 thousands.' 



" Let me look to future days. Another year has commenced, and not one of my minis- 

 tering spirits has been taken from me. The same minds, and hearts, and hands uphold me ; 

 but others have come to my sustaining, and each pen and each pencil will, as heretofore, 

 strive to impart genial light without a needless shadow on the leaves of my future days. 



" Those leaves will be welcomed, as they have been, in each of the earth's five divisions : 

 for those leaves have for many years gladdened hearts in the islands of Oceania ; and re-echoed 

 from Asia, America, and Africa has been this sentence from Australia — ' We are taught by 

 your pages, we welcome them as old trusty friends ; and my wife leans over me as I read, 

 and half-sobs out, "Doesn't that remind you of our old home?" May those readers — may 

 all readers of my leaves — remain ; and I will journey on sustained by their approbation, 

 praying that they may seek for information from those leaves, promising that it shall be 

 obtained from the best authorities, that it shall be imparted kindly, that only the dishonest 

 shall call forth severity ; and I trust, when another year is closed, the same and other friends 

 will again write, ' You have been useful to thousands,' for that grateful comment will again 

 sustain and invoke, as it has now, the Spirit of the Journal of Horticulture." 



