FLOWER THEFTS. 
131 
saying by your leave to the owner ; having selected the flowers 
most to his fancy, he arranged them tastefully, and then walked 
oft' with a free and jaunty air, and an expression of satisfaction 
and self-complacency truly ridiculous under the circumstances. 
He had made up his nosegay with so much pains, eyed it so ten- 
derly as he carried it before him, and moved along with such a 
very mincing and dainty manner, that he was probably on the 
way to present himself and his trophy to his sweetheart ; and we 
can only hope that he met with just such a reception as was de- 
served by a man who had been committing petty larceny. As if 
to make the chapter complete, the very same afternoon, the vil- 
lage being full of strangers, we saw several young girls, elegantly 
flounced, put their hands through the railing of another garden, 
facing the street, and help themselves in the same easy manner 
to their neighbor's prettiest flowers: what would they have 
thought if some one had stepped up w^ith a pair of scissors and 
cut half a yard from the ribbon on their hats, merely because it 
was pretty, and one had a fancy for it ? Neither the little girl, 
nor the strangers in broadcloth and flowers, seem to have learned 
at common school, or at Sunday school, or at home, that respect 
for the pleasures of others is simple good manners, regard for the 
rights of others, common honesty. 
No one who had a flower border of his own would be likely 
to offend in this way ; he would not do so unwittingly, at least ; 
and if guilty of such an act, it would be premeditated pilfering. 
When people take pains to cultivate fruits and flowers themselves, 
they have some idea of their value, which can only be justly 
measured by the owner's regard for them. And then, moreover, 
gardening is a civilizing and improving occupation in itself ; its in- 
