THE FLORICULTURAL ENTHUSIAST. 
279 
drawing for which was taken from specimens 
exhibited to the Horticultural Society. The 
plant which bore the fruit was sent to Mr. 
Braddick from Mr. Kirke's nursery, under the 
name of the Java Peach. Mr. Kirke received 
it through a friend from Java, to which coun- 
try it had no doubt been carried from China. 
THE FLORICULTURAL ENTHUSIAST. 
BT AN OLD FLOKIST. 
Never was advice given more earnestly, nor 
was it ever more needed, than when I entreated 
my boy to purchase nothing until he had the 
cost of it in his hand, that he might see and 
feel it, ere he expended it ; for I felt, and 
thousands of others have had experience to 
confirm it, that credit is the creator of extra- 
vagance ; and that the very best of us incur 
expenses with open accounts that we should 
never think of incurring had we the money 
first in our hands to look at. We think no- 
thing of buying a flower or a plant that takes 
our fancy, when we have only to order it to 
be sent home, and see our bill once a year. 
Credit is the same in all things. Who is it 
that is extravagant in dress ? Not the man 
who takes his three or four guineas out of his 
pocket to pay for his coat, but he who has only 
to write for his tailor, who troubles him but 
once a year. A tradesman who finds his Christ- 
mas bills come tumbling in one after another 
grumbles heartily, and is astonished they 
should be so high ; vows he will be more 
cautious next year ; resolves, perhaps, that he 
will pay as he goes on ; makes the most 
convenient settlement he can, and before his 
vows and resolutions are cold, gives new orders 
and goes on the same as before; with this dif- 
ference, that he is cautious with his first orders, 
bold with his second, forgets all his determina- 
tions and is extravagant with his third. In 
short, no man who has the temptation of great 
facilities for credit, is so cautious as he who 
determines never to wear a thing until it is 
paid for, and never to buy a thing until he can 
look at his money and the article he wants at 
the same moment. I have known a poor 
weaver, at Bethnal Green, buy a five-pound 
tulip, to pay for it by weekly instalments of five 
shillings, to betaken from wages hardly enough 
to keep him decently. If that man could not 
have bought upon credit he would never have 
bought at all, because he never got five shil- 
lings ahead of his wants ; but the facilities 
afforded him of indulging in his fancy, with- 
out first getting the money, was his ruin ; that 
is, if it be ruin to be always in want, always 
in difficulty, always in debt. When we have 
the money in one hand and the article we 
desire in the other, we are in a condition fairly 
to balance one against the other ; but when the 
article we want is before us, and we have not 
the money to pay for it, we are not in a con- 
dition to estimate the one against the other. 
Possession of the one is offered to us and we 
wish for it : we think we shall have the 
money long before pay-day comes. It is 
nothing to talk of, and we can be gratified 
six months sooner by taking credit : very little 
persuasion on the part of the seller settles the 
business. We possess ourselves of the object 
we require, or rather fancy we require, and if 
we waited until the pay-day before we pos- 
sessed it, and had the money in hand, the 
money would tempt us to abstain. If, there- 
fore, it were the last words I had to utter, and 
wished to leave the most valuable advice that 
youth, and all beyond youth upwards, could act 
upon, it would be, " Buy nothing until you 
have the money in your hand to pay for 
it, that you may fairly estimate which will 
be of the most service to you." This advice 
I gave to a son, but his ardour was too much 
for his prudence, and, as will be seen by the 
few striking instances of folly and obstinacy, 
he was perpetually in some scrape or other. 
I have always been an amateur florist, but my 
ambition was not of the highest order. My 
pinks and auriculas were my pride to show 
at the Britannia or the Greyhound — a sort of 
annual excuse for a feast ; and if I won a 
fourth-rate prize, I felt there was no greater 
man in existence, except the winners of the 
first, second, and third ; nay, I sometimes 
would not admit that they had fairly won. I 
have often noticed that theirs had more faults 
than mine, but I never examined whether 
mine had more than the one beneath me. I 
took my youth to a Show at the Britannia, 
which was then a country public-house, over- 
looking the Shepherd and Shepherdess fields, 
by the City-road : on that occasion I got a 
prize, amounting in value to, perhaps, half my 
day's expenses. This pleased me, and the boy 
saw it ; it roused the youth's ambition, and he 
chatted with some of the most cunning of the 
floricultural foxes present, among the rest with 
old Gabel, next to whom he sat all the dinner 
time, and an hour afterwards they were in 
earnest conversation. This was an Auricula 
Show; the flowers were brought on the table, 
and the discussion upon their merits was in- 
teresting enough. Gabel had got bills printed 
about his Tulip Show, which was to open in the 
middle of the next month, "admittance, one 
shilling;" but he gave my boy a general invi- 
tation, which I thought rather kind than other- 
wise. For some days all the young scamp's 
thoughts and conversation was upon flowers. 
( !:i1jc1 had made a llorist of him, and then: 
was no getting a word in edgeways about any 
thing but flowers. I found he had Wen 
