36 A GARDEN DIARY 
SEPTEMBER 16, 1899 
pew forms of frailty are more lamentable 
than vanity, and few variations of vanity 
have for some time back seemed to me more 
stamped with puerility than garden vanity. Can 
anything be imagined more childish, or less 
worthy of a reasonable human being, than for 
A or Z to pride themselves on the fact that 
whereas Horificus globuratus fl. pl. flourishes 
like a weed in their gardens, it entirely refuses 
to grow in those of B or X, despite the fact 
that B and X have remade the greater part of 
their borders, in a spirit of slavish emulation? 
The same argument applies, even more forcibly, 
to other details, such as the making of cuttings, 
or layers, the carrying of tender plants through 
the winter, the satisfactory growing of vegetables, 
and so forth; operations which ought to be 
approached in the largest and most enlightened 
spirit, and never for a moment made the subject 
of mere petty self-satisfaction, or of a narrow and 
arrogant self-laudation. 
