84 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



which, regarding the condition of those two immense 

 blue eyes, appears to be quite hopeless ; then decking 

 her with every bit of finery which she can beg from 

 mammy or nurse, and waiting upon her with a fond, 

 untiring service. 



And even so did I, in the childhood of that life, 

 which is always young — do not our hearts foreknow, 

 my brothers, the happy truth, which old men certify, 

 that the love of flow^ers is of those few earthly plea- 

 sures which age cannot wither ?^ — even so did I, in 



* My sallet days, 

 When I was green in judgment,' 



essay, with an enthusiastic, though ofttimes mistaken, 

 zeal, to propitiate and to serve the Rose. And 

 specially, as with my little boy and his large idol, in 

 the matter of food, I tried to please her with a great 

 diversity of diet. I made anxious experiment of a 

 multiplicity of manures — organic and inorganic, 

 animal and vegetable, cheap and costly, home and 

 foreign. I laboured to discover her favourite dish as 

 earnestly as the alchemist to realise the Philosopher s 

 Stone; but I differed from the alchemist, the 

 Rosarian from the Rosicrucian, in one essential point 

 — / found it I 



Where } Not down among the bones. I tried 

 bones of all denominations— bones in their integrity, 



