IX. 
HOUSE PLANTS. 
Very few houses are without something in the shape of 
a plant during the winter, from the soap box of stubby 
geraniums in Aunt Chloe’s kitchen window to the well-ap¬ 
pointed conseryatory of the handsome city dwelling. It is 
not an easy matter for the lover of flowers to give them up 
with the first frost until the next May, and so house plants 
are attempted, under all sorts of unfavorable conditions, 
with the fond delusion that a heated room will impose itself 
upon them as a summer atmosphere, and bring forth buds 
and blossoms as a natural consequence. 
Tall, overgrown plants, that have faithfully done their 
duty all summer in the way of spreading and blossoming, 
are brought at once from natural to artificial heat, and ex¬ 
pected to go on being things of beauty and joys, in spite of 
the shock to their system of being transplanted, in addition 
to the hard work they have been doing all summer, and the 
result is a miserable-looking set of spindling plants, that 
drop their leaves, and take up all the windows, and are in 
everybody’s way. Had they been partially cut down in 
proper season, or taken up bodily by the roots and hung by 
the neck in the cellar, not until they were dead, but to gain 
needed rest for a new life in the spring, they would have 
emerged in better shape. 
Preparations for house plants in winter must be made 
during the previous spring and summer ; and proper soil, a 
