EXPENSES 
65 
Once having seen a plant put well and firmly 
into place, it is an easy thing to do so alone 
in the future. 
Gardeners’ wages are on the whole very 
inadequate. Much is expected of them ; not 
only hard and constant work in all weathers, 
but knowledge and artistic feeling, and taste. 
Has so much as this ever been expected in 
any other line of life at a guinea a week ? 
Enlightenment is gradually overcoming preju- 
dice. Now and again one comes across an old- 
fashioned example of real narrow-mindedness, 
but it is dying out. 
Some years ago I had almost engaged a 
head gardener, when I mentioned that I liked 
to grow my asparagus and early salads on the 
French system ; whereupon he, in righteous 
indignation, declined the place, saying, “ Do 
you think I’m going to waste my twenty 
years’ experience in gardening on learning 
new-fangled rubbish ? ” 
A lady gardener was not an unqualified 
success. She worked hard enough for ten, 
rain or fine, and got on well with the men 
under her, even taking her turn at stoking. 
But she had not enough practical experience, 
and did a good deal of damage during her 
short stay. 
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