I IO 
THE FERN PARADISE. 
a shady corner — anywhere, and they will grow and 
develop, unrolling their charming fronds, and ex- 
hibiting their sweet feathery forms with all their 
natural grace in the presence of squalor and 
misery. The poor seamstress painfully working 
in yon ill-lighted garret, where the glorious sun 
never comes, might perhaps have shed bitter tears 
over the withered flower that all her care had 
failed to rear ! But a fern would grow where 
her flower had died, would smile upon her with 
its mute flowerless smile, would live in the 
dark light of her attic window, and, unfolding its 
fronds day by day, would assume its most majestic 
and graceful form even in the presence of a poor 
seamstress. 
But it is not only the poor who have to live in 
gardenless dwellings, and look out from sunless 
windows. The mansions of the rich, and thou- 
sands of houses of the well-to-do, and of the 
middle classes, are necessarily in this great 
London, and in other cities and towns, placed 
where the sun cannot exert his charming life-giving 
influence. Many a window of a grand house looks 
