December, 19 12 THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 215 



The Garden Doctor 



ONCE upon a time — and not a hundred years ago — a lady, presumably 

 young and charming, fell ill, and for a number of months spent a 

 good deal of her time studying her own symptoms. 



This, the psychological doctors tell us, is often the beginning of a more 

 or less confirmed invalidism. To enjoy ill health is called by a long Latin 

 name which at the moment we have forgotten how to spell. 



The lady we have in mind looked out of her window upon a city yard; 

 it might have been lovely country and been all the same to her, because her 

 "inner eye" was absorbed with reflections upon her complicated and some- 

 what disordered department of the interior. One day she saw her 

 neighbor, an elderly German, clipping at his fence vines. Absently she 

 watched, then became interested. She, too, wanted a share in the spring- 

 time — she wanted to do something with plants. Soon after she received 

 a rough box labelled "Live Plants. Perishable. Open at once." She 

 never had liked uncouth packages; a few days before she would have 

 objected to doing anything "at once," to bother with "perishable" stuff would 

 have been a nuisance, for she had come within an ace of missing the one 

 thing most needed by her to insure herhfe-long happiness — but something had 

 waked up inside. To summarize: she opened the box. Up to the country 

 went she and the pansy plants the box contained, and with them the lady 

 began a garden in the place where the garden ought to have been but wasn't. 

 The plants turned out to be not the common garden variety of pansies, but in 

 beauty of marking and in delicate color and glory of size something quite 

 beyond anything this lady believed existed. And the lady turned out to be 

 a real woman, a different being from the limp hypochondriac of our 

 first acquaintance. 



The reader can imagine the sequel. In his or her mind's eye he can 

 trace the slow absorption of the garden interest, the waning of the hypo- 

 chondriacal attitude, and the "marvelous recovery" brought about by the 

 Garden Cure. There is also the Prescriber of the Cure, the sender of the box. 



The author is now a well-known gardener, and the spontaneous and 

 genuine humor with which these "confessions" are given proves the com- 

 pleteness of the garden cure. Who the gardener is, we do not say, but 

 where should such a serial story be printed and find its fitting home but in 



The GARDEN MAGAZINE for 1913 



with attractive cover illustrations for the early months of the new year? 



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