10 A GARDEN DIARY 
That he or she ought to have been made so is 
quite true, but as a matter of fact, have they? 
We are moulded out of exceedingly stubborn 
stuff, and are not often ennobled, I suspect, 
by the landscapes that surround us, any more 
able similarity. Much the same sort of clouds 
and sunshine, much the same sort of nights 
and days, much the same sort of summers and 
winters, visit alike the tamest and the wildest 
of them. Even the more dramatic and exciting 
fluctuations—snow, and hail, storm, and lightning 
—exhibit a greater impartiality than might have 
been expected. The gale that has just unroofed 
your lordly tower, has equally swept the tiles 
off our humble porch; in the same way that 
moralists are fond of assuring us that sickness 
and sorrow, loss and pain, old age and death, 
fall equally upon the homes of beggars and of 
kings. 
Never having belonged to the last of these 
classes, I cannot take it upon me to answer for 
the discomforts that pertain to it. With regard 
to the other, though I have often seen myself 
figuring, or upon the point of figuring, amongst 
its sad and tattered ranks, the impression has 
never been a particularly agreeable one, and I 
prefer, therefore, not to dwell upon it. It was 
