TOWN GARDENS 



And they regard such evidence as withered and wet 

 flower stalks with half-humorous scorn. For all they 

 may not be well favoured, and a pretty flower-woman is 

 as rare as a dead donkey, still, for me, they have a certain 

 dingy dignity, or rather a natural picturesque quality as 

 of lichen on the pavements. 



These people are the town's gardens of odd corners, 

 while another tribe of them are perambulating gardens 

 bringing sudden colour into the soberest of streets. 

 There are those who carry enormous baskets on their 

 heads, and cry in some incomprehensible tongue words 

 intended to convey a message such as " All fresh." 

 To see a gorgeous glowing mass of Daffodils sway down 

 the street borne triumphantly aloft like the litter of 

 some Princess is one of those sights to repay many grey 

 days. Then the brothers to this tribe are those who carry 

 from street to street Ferns and Lilies on carts, drawn 

 often by a patient ass. I own feeling a distrust for 

 these men, they do not dispense their goods with much 

 love. They are not eloquent, as are many flower 

 women in praise of the beauties of the India plant, or 

 the Shuttle-cock Ferns. I feel that they are interlopers in 

 the business, and have failed at the hardware trade, or 

 have no capacity for the selling of rush baskets, or the 

 grinding of scissors. At the heels of all those who sell 

 flowers in the streets are the out-cast members of the 

 tribe, men with brutal faces who follow lonely women in 

 unfrequented streets trying to thrust dead plants upon 

 them, and cursing if they are not bought. And there are 

 the aged crones who sit by the railings of little squares 

 and hold out a tray of boot laces, matches, a few very 

 suspicious-looking Apples, and, in the corner, a bunch of 

 dead flowers — a kind of aesthetic appeal. 



Your true flower-lover will search as carefully among 

 their baskets for the object of his desire as will the 



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