HOW TO SUCCEED 31 
If your cousin’s wife has famous larkspurs every 
summer—larkspurs more than six feet tall and 
with enormous spikes of bloom—that is not “Ser- 
ena’s luck’’; she took pains. Serena took pains to 
secure the very best seed, or plants, obtainable; 
you may be sure of that. She took pains to pre- 
pare a bed of deep and well-drained soil for them 
and to enrich the same without letting manure 
come next to the roots. Every May she takes pains 
to work a little bone meal into the soil around 
the plants. And she stakes the plants in time; 
early and late she is mindful of her larkspurs— 
which she knows will respond quickly enough if 
she gives them what they want. Serena is “on 
to her job,” or everybody would not be talking 
about her larkspurs. 
It is not luck that counts; it is ordinarily in- 
telligent labor. If only everyone would realize 
that this uses up no more time than pottering, not 
infrequently a great deal less! The labor that 
makes for success is marked by the timeliness that 
finds it materially easier to get ahead of work 
than to lag behind it. Things are done when 
they ought to be done. Labor is thus so distributed 
through the season that at no time does it become 
wearisome enough to cease to be a pleasurable rec- 
reation. ‘And by system every step possible is 
saved. 
All this is helped along by a good memory. 
Every successful grower of flowers has a good, or, 
at any rate, a serviceable, one. The memory may 
