Replant the larger bulbs in the beds made ready 

 in the garden proper, then take all the wee children 

 to an especial nursery prepared for them in the vege- 

 table garden; by the following season they will be 

 sufficiefitly grown to be permitted to make their de- 

 but, when they should bloom, even though modestly. 



The most exciting of all tulips is the Gesneriana 

 spathulata — not because of its spectacular name, 

 but because of its history and its transcendent 

 beauty. This is the tulip which turned the Holland- 

 ers quite mad — for all those phlegmatic eaters of 

 three hundred and sixty-five cold, hard-boiled eggs a 

 year, sold or mortgaged all their terrestrial posses- 

 sions to gamble in the Gesneriana stock. 



One bulb sometimes brought — I forget just what, 

 but it went way up into the thousand dollars some- 

 where; and Gesneriana was even quoted regularly on 

 the London stock exchange, as if it were a gold mine, 

 or transcontinental railroad. 



When the corner in Gesneriana broke, thousands of 

 Dutchmen " went broke " too, and as great a panic 

 spread through the land as if the dikes had all 

 broken. No wonder the spathulata holds its head 

 so high with such a history as this. It stands on a 

 stem twenty-four inches high, and is of the clearest 



105 



