22 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
conduct. The evil that we do lives after us. The early cos- 
mos quoted as three feet high was given the whole length 
down the middle of a bed; but in my virgin soil it grew over 
five feet, and when a long rainy season occurred while it was 
in full flower, it leaned over and completely blocked one of 
my paths; and I let it do so, because I did not know any better. 
T never thought of stakes in those days. The pentstemon, a 
gift, grew lustily, and when September arrived with no visible ~ 
bloom I thought it wise to look up its credentials, and found 
that while it was very desirable, it was a tender perennial. As 
I knew nothing of shielding delicate constitutions from our 
northern severities, its place knew it no more after that first 
summer of green promise. I had been attracted by the high 
praise given to the Nicotiana affinis, and I planted a whole 
paper of seeds, watered and watched them advance from their 
first seed leaves. Occasionally I questioned why the nicotiana 
appeared all over the plot, but thought it was due to the scat- 
tering of seeds by the birds, that sat daily on my rustic fence to 
fly down during my absence and nip off the heads of the blue 
annual larkspur. This was a vague inference about the cause 
of the decapitated heads that were found on the ground until 
the cosmos grew over the walk like the leaning tower of Pisa, 
and further access to the larkspur was cut off. So I went on 
in bland ignorance, and fingered the woolly leaves of my nico- 
tiana, and by September I began to wonder why there was no 
bloom. 
One day I had a visitor, a young woman of prompt and 
ready action, who had made a special study of botany. She 
looked patronizingly on my bit of cultivated rock heap with its 
fading beauty, while I apologetically set forth my plans for an 
extension another year. She suddenly made a dive and 
plucked out one of my nicotianas and tossed it aside. 
“Why what are you doing ?” cried I in dismay. 
