54 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



by the hundred for the border, he does not want 

 individuality. The old ladies who used to grow 

 hyacinths in tall blue and green glasses treated 

 them with more respect. Hyacinth glasses are not 

 beautiful, yet one feels tenderly towards them for 

 old sake's sake, — the memories of drowsy hours 

 spent stumbling over Easy Reading for the Young, 

 in a room where the glasses stood on the window- 

 sill when spring had dethroned the red sausage- 

 shaped draught excluder, and the canary that hung 

 between chirped as he peeped first at the white 

 flower in the blue glass and then at the pink flower 

 in the green, and possibly (at least in the stumbling 

 reader's mind) speculated as to whether the ghostly 

 roots to be seen through the glass were a rare and 

 horrible specimen of worm. Those hyacinths were 

 appreciated, the first opening of the flowers noted, 

 the number of bells counted, the scent enjoyed 

 with neighbours not similarly blessed with bulbs. 

 Now we do not grow hyacinths in glasses. We, 

 some people, grow them in pans, where they look 

 very like a small flower-bed moved into the house. 

 Six or eight "miniature hyacinths" (these are the 

 immature offset bulbs of one or two years' growth) 

 crammed in together, where, one would think, 

 they must be very uncomfortable, though it does 



