CHAPTER XIV 



HOW TO SHOW THE ROSE 



When I first exhibited Roses, the boxes selected for 

 the Queen of Flowers were not what royal boxes 

 ought to be. They were ordinary and heterogeneous ; 

 they were high and low, wide and narrow, painted 

 and plain. Disorder prevailed, as at the Floralia of 

 old ; and Bacchus again appeared upon the scene in 

 the cases which had contained his wines, and which, 

 reduced in altitude, and filled with dingy moss, now 

 held the glowing Roses. These were kept alive, 

 auspice ^sculapio^ in old physic-bottles filled with 

 water, and plunged to the neck in the moss aforesaid ; 

 but sometimes the succulent potato was used to pre- 

 serve vitality ; and I remember well a large hamper, 

 with its lid gracefully recumbent, in which six small 

 Roses uprose from huge specimens of * Farmer's 

 Profit ' — the pommes de terre being inserted, but not 

 concealed, in a stratum of ancient hay. Sometimes 

 the flowers were crowded together, sometimes they 

 were lonely, neighbourless, like the snipes, now in 



* wisps,' now solitary ; sometimes they appeared 



225 P 



