AT A ROSE-SHOW 257 



an exhibitor reappeared, hot and out of breath, and 

 * begged pardon, but he had left a knife among his 

 Roses/ He had a magnificent Rose in his coat, and, 

 ' from information which I had received,' I thought 

 it my duty to watch his movements without appear- 

 ing to do so. He left the tent with a much smaller 

 flower in his buttonhole, and I went immediately to 

 his box. There was the illustrious stranger, resplen- 

 dent, but with a fatal beauty. The cunning one had 

 hoist himself with his own petard, for he had for- 

 gotten another bloom of the same Rose, already in 

 his 24, and I at once wrote * Disqualified for dupli- 

 cates ' upon his exhibition-card. Keen must have 

 been the shaft which he had himself feathered from 

 that borrowed plume, but keener far to feel (for it was 

 a fact patent to all) that if he had not made the addi- 

 tion, he must have won the premier prize. 



Another failure of empirical knavery, another slip 

 between the cup of silver and the lip of stratagem, 

 occurs to my recollection. It was my good fortune 

 to win a prize goblet, annually given for Roses at one 

 of our midland shows, so frequently, that my success 

 became monotonously irksome to the competitors gene- 

 rally, but specially to one of these covetous exhi- 

 bitors who grow Roses only for gain. He induced, 

 as it afterwards transpired, two other growers of the 



Rose to combine with him in an attempt ' to beat the 



R 



