Occasionally there is a rumbling as of distant thunder 
around the editorial throne. Kindly criticism and suggestions 
for improvement in our work result in an interesting medley 
of ideas. 
If a certain number of the Bulletin is put into your hands 
and you feel disappointed in it, the reason may be not that it 
is at fault, but that you are expecting from it a kind of enjoy- 
ment it does not mean to provide. There are magazines which 
are meant primarily to instruct and others meant to amuse, 
and the Bulletin aims at a judicious mixture of the two. One 
should worship perfection of course, but with us there is some- 
times a beneficent and quickening shadow of imperfection which 
creeps across our pages showing how delightfully amateur we 
are! And through this very shadow the Bulletin has achieved 
its own particular halo of style. 
Even though so frankly amateur, we hope to be a magazine 
of accurate garden information, realizing the importance of 
being technically correct, and it is only occasionally that we 
receive a manuscript which necessitates our emulation of the 
White Queen's habit of "trying to believe something every 
morning before breakfast." This is however the exception, our 
real trouble is lack of space, making it necessary to return 
much good material. 
In a recent book of essays one on Gardening is very 
apropos and quotable. The author, Robert Benchley, says 
''During the past month almost every periodical has installed 
an agricultural department containing short articles written by 
some one in the office who has an unoccupied typewriter, telling 
the American people how to start and hold the interest in a small 
garden. All of these articles appear to be conducted by profes- 
sionals for the benefit of the laj^man, which seems a rather one- 
sided way of going about the thing, — obviously the suggestions 
should come from the layman himself in the nature of a warn- 
ing to others." Thus Mr. Benchley, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, approves of our amateur way with the Bulletin. 
Between the Bulletin and other garden magazines there 
lies the gulf of dollars and cents. All nine of our editors work 
busily in their separate stars or spheres, — not for money cer- 
tainly, nor for fame, so it must be for that hackneyed joy of 
working,- — they may feel like the man who prayed, "If I am to 
be born again, oh Lord, let it be anywhere in America with a 
pad of paper in my crib and a fountain pen in my hand." 
From the letters we receive we can but infer that our 
subscribers, amateur and professional alike, admirers or critics 
as the case may be, seem to expect these nine versatile women 
to make the Bulletin more than a book of horticultural 
knowledge, more even than a faultless literary production. We 
must therefore furnish, — six times a 3 7 ear, — a Miracle ! 
194 M. H. B. McK. 
