Some Gardeners I Have Known 153 
ancholy as I walk among my children—little creatures that 
have taken form at my bidding; for I am burdened with the 
heavy responsibility of having called so many into existence, 
and there are seasons when I cannot provide properly for 
their meat and drink, and on every side I feel their mute 
claims upon me, their foster parent. We feel a pitiful sym- 
pathy for the limitations of our dumb four-footed brothers, 
who yet speak eloquently through their eyes; but what of 
the unuttered gratitude or sorrows of our garden friends, 
who find no adequate expression to reach the careless heart 
of him who is pledged to love and cherish them? Their 
dumb silence touches me almost more deeply in their joy on 
a June morning than does their bitter pain under an August 
drought. 
Spencer says the quality of life is determined by the degree 
of response to environment. If this be true, what is the quality 
of life that points a grown-up finger helplessly at the ordinary 
maple, oak or elm, our daily companions in either city or 
country, and says, “What tree is that?” that glances casually 
at the commonest flowers, poppies, morning-glories—even a 
nasturtium—and asks in good faith, “ What is that?” Surely 
such a response to environment needs quickening, and I give 
as the chief reason for my garden efforts that I wanted to 
know something definite of the floral world; I wanted to re- 
spond intelligently to this beautiful phase of human environ- 
ment. A single specimen is sufficient to study and cherish. 
It is enough for me to have a single Ulmaria filipendula, with 
its extending family, and watch with keen interest for the 
precise date when it breaks each year into soft foamy white 
bloom. No stray visitor in the garden knows of my modest 
Ulmaria, nor of my one exquisite Tviteleia laxa, now multi- 
plied twentyfold, with its fragile thread-like stems and 
starry blossoms, nor the corner where the Houstonia grows, 
