COMPANION TO THE FLORAL MAGAZINE. 
0 / 
ROSY RECOLLECTIONS. 
No. 4. 
There is excitement in the small bosom of the schoolboy, who has just 
returned for his Christmas holidays, and is to hunt on the morrow. He 
roams restlessly upstairs and downstairs, from his bedroom—where, attired 
in his new “ riding pants,” he has been surveying himself for the four¬ 
teenth time—to the stable, where abides the jumping cob, and where he 
never wearies of hearing from the groom that he “ needn’t turn ’im from 
nothing.” And won’t he astonish Master Brown, his schoolmate and 
neighbour, who is sure to be out “ on that one-eyed brute of a ponyand 
won’t he gallop past Puncher maximus, who has thrashed him liberally 
during the last half, if he can only catch him in some dirty lane? He 
cracks his hunting-whip in the hall; he “ who-ops ” in the shrubberies; 
and, finally, retires to dream that he has “pounded” all the field over 
an extra-sized canal, and that as he flies over its sullen waters, the head 
of Puncher maximus bobs up, and fixes on him a look of envy and 
despair. 
And thus did I, on the eve of my first Rose-Show, stray feverishly in¬ 
doors and out. Now in my garden, gazing reproachfully at those Roses 
which were not in sufficient bloom, as though they had done it to spite 
me, and trying to induce a premature development, until I cracked their 
petals and spoiled them; and now, under cover, filling my zinc tubes, 
picking out the best moss for my boxes, and writing correct cards of the 
names and species of the Roses which were to race for the cup. All was 
in readiness when, as the daylight fell, I took a last lingering survey of 
my pets. There was a Baronne Prevost, I remember, which I rather 
flattered myself would make Jones gasp; a Countess Mole of such ample 
proportions as would have won her praise in Brobdignag; and a grand 
specimen of Las Casas, which we then accounted to be a noble Rose, 
not criticizing in those days so keenly as in these, an “ eye ” about the 
size of a shilling! With blooms of this calibre, tastefully disposed, I 
fully hoped to bring disgrace on Jones; and I saw him that night in my 
broken slumbers, bringing out of his usual hamper twenty-four small and 
sullied Roses, sticking them, without any regard to size or colour, in the 
ginger-beer bottles, to which I have previously referred, and of course 
miserably defeated. 
There was no need next morning for the small bits of gravel, which my 
faithful gardener threw up to my bedroom window, for I was nearly dressed 
when the summons came, and in my garden at four a.m. My reader, if 
you have never seen Roses when, refreshed by those welcome dews which 
flow ee from the cool cisterns of the midnight air,” they awake in the soft 
splendour of the rising sun, you have yet to see them in their glory. It 
seemed a cruel wrong to decapitate them, and yet why should they be as 
H 
