JANUARY 5 



sisters and I used to rush out after lessons and ask him 

 what the weather was goiag to be, he would stop his 

 diggmg, look up at the sky, and say : ' WeU, miss, it may 

 be fine and it may be wet ; and if the sun comes out, it 

 will be warmer.' After this solemn announcement he 

 would wipe his brow and resume his work, and we went 

 off, quite satisfied, to our well-known haunts in the 

 Hertfordshire woods, to gather Violets and Primroses for 

 our mother, who loved them. All this, you wUl see, laid 

 a very small foundation for any knowledge of garden- 

 ing ; and yet, owiag to the vivid character of the impressions 

 of youth, it left a memory that was very useful to me when 

 I took up gardening later in Ufe. To this day I can smell 

 the taU white double Eockets that throve so well in the 

 damp garden, and scented the evening air. They grew 

 by the side of glorious bunches of Oriental Poppies and 

 the on-coming spikes of the feathery Spinsa aruncus. 

 This garden had peculiar charms for us, because, though 

 we hardly realised it, such gardens were already 

 beginning to grow out of fashion, sacrificed to the new 

 bedding-out system, which altered the whole gardening 

 of Europe. I shall allude to this again. I can never 

 think of this old home without my thoughts recurring 

 to Hood's poem ' I remember ! I remember ! ' too well 

 known perhaps, even by the young, to justify my quoting 

 it here. Equally graven on my memory is a much less 

 famUiar little poem my widowed mother used to say 

 to me as we walked together up and down the gravel 

 paths, with the primrose sky behind the tall Beeches of 

 the neighbouring park. For years I never knew where it 

 came from, nor where she learnt it in her own sentimental 

 youth. Not long ago I found it in a book of selections. 

 It was written by John Hamilton Eeynolds, that warm 

 friend of poor Keats, who, as Mr. Sidney Colvin tells us 

 in his charming Life of the poet, never rose to any great 



