90 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the garden are satisfactorily carried out. Under such fair and' 

 reasonable conditions, an intelligent and capable gardener, who 

 is anxious to get forward in his profession, will strive to his 

 utmost to give full satisfaction to his employer, and in ordinary 

 circumstances he invariably succeeds. Such employers and their 

 gardeners may quite legitimately differ at times, but, being 

 reasonable men, they as a rule manage to settle their differences 

 in a friendly spirit, and without unduly straining their relations 

 to each other, or making an unpleasant exhibition of themselves 

 among their friends or to the public. So far as my observations 

 have extended, these conditions are fairly characteristic of the 

 relations that prevail between gardeners and their employers in 

 the United Kingdom, and hence the good feeling which, on the 

 whole, is generally found existing between them — a feeling of 

 mutual respect, sympathy, and esteem that is certainly not 

 excelled, and seldom attained, among any other class of the 

 community. 



Still, while human nature and the ways of the world are 

 more variable than even our much-maligned climate, we need 

 not imagine that the wholesome and satisfactory traits of garden- 

 ing life, which I have attempted to depict, will by any means 

 universally prevail amongst us. Far from it, as we all know too 

 well. Natural infirmities, and careless or evil dispositions, with 

 all their asperities, will, I fear, always remain to interfere with 

 the harmony and good feeling that ought to reign between the 

 employer and the employed. We cannot but deeply regret the 

 failures in life, from man's ignorance, stupidity, and folly, that 

 we daily see around us at this advanced period of civilisation. 

 All fair-minded people would willingly sacrifice much of their 

 personal means and comforts, if thereby they could efface the 

 lack of wisdom and forethought in their fellow-men — a consum- 

 mation devoutly to be striven for, even although it may never be 

 attained. The nearer we can approach to such a happy state of 

 perfection the better it will be, we may reasonably anticipate, for 

 everybody. 



In the meantime, however, we must deal with things as they 

 are, and returning to our subject we find, very much too often, 

 that serious differences exist between certain gardeners and their 

 employers arising from some trivial cause, a thoughtless or 

 hastily spoken word, or a foolish action, of which on mature 



