THE WANING YEAR 
149 
appointed petits soins, not one of which may be omitted 
with impunity if you really set store upon the ultimate 
reward. By the which reward I am, however, far from 
meaning the success of the pot-hunter who would hustle 
all his choicest blossoms into one crowded week of in¬ 
glorious life, the life of the “exhibit.” My flowers are 
flowers, not merely potential exhibits to be mechanically 
hurried or retarded to swell my vanity at the shows. 
The rightful province of the professional grower is so 
much to be respected that I would never even so much 
as set foot therein. It is enough for me to profit by the 
results of his collation in enriching my own stock from 
his when occasion arises; but to stretch my plants upon 
that Procrustean scheme which is, perhaps of necessity, 
his, that will I not. His varied arts of “stopping," 
“pinching," “rubbing off," “letting break," and so forth 
are invaluable—or I had better said indispensable—but 
I like to use them at my own discretion, and so, as it 
were, to eat my cake and have it too, securing for myself 
a deliberate succession of the delightful flower, instead of 
such a brief plethora of beauty as makes for an indigestion 
of the colour-sense, much after the same fashion as “ gallery 
headache” or a visual surfeit of pyrotechnics. For me 
the chrysanthemum is far too majestic and leisurely a 
flower to be herded willy-nilly into show-space. Its 
varieties have overmuch individuality to look their best 
in a crowd. 
But above and beyond this reason for husbanding one's 
resources is the far greater pleasure that one finds in a slow 
and stately pageant of rare colours and fine forms than, 
say, in a transformation scene. And so, by making the 
