58 
COMPANION TO THE FLORAL MAGAZINE. 
lost to the general public as though they “ sprang in deserts where no 
men abide”? Ilfaut souffrirpour etre admired; and, moreover, Jones’s 
time was come. 
We reached the place of exhibition, my gardener and I, at least three 
hours before there was the slightest necessity, and a considerable time 
before the doors were opened of the Hall in which the show w r as held. 
There was no trace to be seen of our adversary, and a lively hope began 
to gleam in my ungenerous breast that possibly he had come to grief. 
Had a special messenger arrived to inform us that the Reverend Jones’s 
market-cart had broken down abruptly, and that his Roses were strewed 
over the king’s high-road, I fear that I should not have experienced that 
large amount of earnest sympathy which is due to a clergyman in dis¬ 
tress. Nay, I blush to confess that a vision of beetles nibbling at Jones’s 
favourite blooms presented itself to my imagination, and that I did not 
repel it, as I ought to have done. 
Communicating with the Hall were several anterooms, in which we 
prepared our flowers for exhibition; and just as, after a most elaborate 
and careful arrangement, I emerged from one of these, proudly bearing 
my precious freight before me,—Oh ! what do you think that, to my 
intense dismay and horror, I confronted in that wretched lobby ? Jones , 
with a bran-new box, the facsimile of my own, zinc tubes, green moss, 
and everything in the highest style of art! We met face to face, like Box 
and Cox with their two tea-trays, muttered a mutual “ How d’ye do?” 
which meant, “ What business have you here?” glared at each other’s 
Roses, and separated. But, alas ! in that brief survey what did I behold ! 
The brute had actually got a Baronne Prevost, beating mine by half an 
inch in diameter, several Roses wdiich I had never even seen, and to 
crown all, a yellow Noisette, which I knew would be the envy and admira¬ 
tion of every pretty girl in the show. 
Three hours afterwards, that show was open to the British public, and 
my cup of misery brimmed over when my enemy met me in the middle 
of the Hall, and remarked to me patronizingly, before a crowd of people, 
“ They’ve disqualified you for extra foliage, or I really believe that you 
would have come in third /” S. R. H. 
THE PRINCESS ALEXANDRA. 
In these days floriculture is much advancing: there are more and 
better amateurs each year. You can scarcely go to any house with a 
garden attached, where the owner has not some object of interest to 
show you. Some follow one (or more), others follow other classes of 
flowers, but it is the exception to find a garden without some floral 
hobby which is ridden with considerable pride. This is well, for the 
garden is a source of constant interest, occupation, and hope; and the 
