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Malmaison Carnations ; whereas her own gardener did 

 not excel in any of these, though she admitted that he 

 was admirable for Grapes and Chrysanthemums. " If the 

 others could do all these things to perfection," she argued, 

 " why could n,ot he do them ? " She expected her 

 gardener to do equally well all that she had seen best 

 done in the other big places. It was in vain that I 

 pleaded in defence of her man that all gardeners were 

 human creatures, and that it was in the nature of 

 such creatures to have individual aptitudes and special 

 preferences, and that it was to be expected that each 

 man should excel in one thing, or one thing at a time, 

 and so on ; but it was of no use, and she would not 

 accept any excuse or explanation. 



I remember another example of a visitor who had 

 a rather large place, and a gardener who had as good 

 a knowledge of hardy plants as one could expect. My 

 visitor had lately got the idea that he liked hardy 

 flowers, though he had scarcely thrown off the influ- 

 ence of some earlier heresy which taught that they 

 were more or less contemptible — the sort of thing for 

 cottage gardens ; still, as they were now in fashion, he 

 thought he had better have them. We were passing 

 along my flower-border, just then in one of its best 

 moods of summer beauty, and when its main occupants, 

 three years planted, had come to their full strength, 

 when, speaking of a large flower-border he had lately 

 had made, he said, " I told my fellow last autumn to 

 get anything he liked, and yet it is perfectly wretched. 



