218 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, December 30, 1856. 
I ever seriously try the time ? I will try to help you ; hut, 
meanwhile, I will take the liberty to give you a piece of 
advice, which is this:—Preserve your incognito, Mr. 
J. H. W., if you would not be written down a very 
Goth by the bulk of your fair sisters, for thus, even by 
| implication, saying anything but the most honeyed 
words about the drapers’ windows, at which so many of 
them, as well as, I must own to it, your humble servant 
likewise, have cast fond, if not longing and lingering 
j looks, while we thus regaled upon and appreciated the 
! beautiful. Some of these sisters, with a spice of the 
i old lady’s doctrine, which led her complacently to believe 
I that her own troubles were afflictions sent for a good 
| purpose, but that the troubles of her neighbours were 
; judgments for their shortcomings, would at once say 
j that the dirty plants were quite as good as you deserved. 
1 Now, though standing bolt upright for the right of the 
drapers to display, and for us to admire, their finery, I 
j am charitable enough to believe that you deserve, and 
sanguine enough to trust you will yet command, success, 
j The mildew was most likely the result of a foggy, 
confined atmosphere, while your soil about the roots 
was but too well supplied with moisture. Dusting the 
parts over with flowers of sulphur from a dredge or 
pepper-box is the best remedy, and whilst the sulphur 
is on the leaves keeping the plants from sunshine for a 
couple of days; then shake the plants when the leaves 
are dry, pull the top several times through water at 
about 60° in a fine day, and place the plants in their 
usual situation on the stage of a greenhouse, or on the 
sill of a window, and treat with air and water, &c., as 
mentioned above, and yet to be mentioned. 
As to insects, keep in mind the old proverb, “ a stitch 
in time saves nine.” In the case of the green fly the 
nine might be rendered nine hundred or nine thousand, 
aud yet not be up to the mark. The time to use the 
antidote is whenever the first insect is seen, if you 
wait until, by their numbers, they have drawn nearly all 
the life blood from the plant—and the filth with which 
they have encrusted its leaves, and thus checked per¬ 
spiration and respiration, prevents it making more 
nourishing feeding material—you may rest assured that 
the question is not easily solved whether it is best to 
cure or destroy. For such insects tobacco is a sovereign 
remedy, whether applied in a liquid form or in smoke 
i from smouldering it to ashes. In a liquid state a fair 
dose will be formed by boiling a quarter of a pound of 
shag in five gallons of water, and, when settled and cool, 
dipping the top of the plant into it, taking care, by 
covering the surface of the soil, that none of the earth 
j drops out. When thus dipped the plants may stand in 
the shade for a day, and then be drawn through clean 
| water, then any dirty places be rubbed with the fingers 
! so as to loosen the filth, aud then be drawn again j 
through the clean water, and set again in their usual 
| places. When there is no necessity for washing, the 
' easiest plan is smoking with tobacco. When all are 
! bad in a greenhouse the whole house may be smoked—it 
matters not how, provided the tobacco smoulders slowly, 
I and, from being covered with some damp surface, as 
moss, the smoke is cool. When but a few plants are 
affected, whether in greenhouse or window, a close box, 
in which the plants can be placed, will be a great saving j 
in tobacco, as a small pinch will be sufficient; and it is ! 
always safer to repeat the dose than to give too much at a 
time. I have generally used a small garden-pot, so set 
that there was a free draught of air towards the hole in 
its bottom, on which were placed some live coal of 
cinder or charcoal, a piece of dry paper over it, then the 
tobacco covered with damp moss or hay, and generally 
this burns out without farther trouble. The different 
fumigators are neat and useful, and a great recom¬ 
mendation, especially for fumigating in a close box, is, 
the smoke is always cool, and all you have to do is to 
light it, put the nozle in at a hole, and turn round the 
handle. I have also used cigarettes thus formed:—A 
piece of brown paper was steeped in a strong solution 
of nitre. When the paper was dry, from a quarter 
to half an ounce of the best and strongest shag was 
spread over it, and it was then rolled up tightly in 
cigar form, and then one end being lighted, and the 
other stuck firmly into anything, it burned slowly until 
all was consumed. Half an ounce will fill a largish 
close box strong enough. It may be a prejudice; but I 
like, for common purposes, the garden-pot as well as any 
of the best machines. In particular cases we have a 
round hole made in the side of the pot near the bottom, 
and at that we can apply the tube of a bellows, aud keep 
out of the smoke, unless we consider being in it a luxury. 
Notwithstanding ray determination, I find I must 
write more than once on this subject. R. Fish. 
THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSION. 
By the Authoress of “ My Flowers." 
(Continued from page 93.) 
Reader, have you pondered well upon the subject of my 
last paper ? have you considered the melancholy story of 
James Anderson? have you laid to heart that love .of drink 
and reckless conduct have already injured his prospects, and 
want of principle strongly marked his early career? Oh, 
what an outsetting in life ! what bags in which to lay up our 
store of happiness and future welfare! The end of such 
a beginning, without the converting grace of God, must be 
woe indeed. 
For a time all appeared to be going on well; Anderson’s 
habits were more temperate, and his punctuality not to be 
complained of. But, alas! this was mere surface-work; 
the heart was unchanged; and, under the guise of great 
decorum and geutle demeanour, he was carrying on a 
system of fraud, of which there is too much reason to 
fear his wife was by no means ignorant. Peculation, 
whether on a large or small scale, seldom goes long un¬ 
detected; and it was scarcely to be supposed, that in an 
establishment where the best mercantile regulations were 
adopted, systematic robbery, like that carried on by Ander¬ 
son, should, for any length of time, remain undiscovered. 
And so it proved; and the kind patron who had taken so 
much pains to rescue the family from degradation and ruin 
was, as may be supposed, deeply grieved to find his efforts 
unavailing. Anderson, with a wife and two children, was 
again thrown upon the world. 
Do you see yonder throng of miserable-looking women, 
most of them with children in their arms, congregated 
round the entrance of that wretched court? some in knots 
of two and three—others gazing up that loathsome-looking 
alley—many laughing aloud in evident enjoyment of the 
spectacle—while on the face of a few an expression of 
mingled sorrow and pity might indeed be traced; while a 
troop of idle and ragged urchins are pelting with mud and 
cabbage-stalks a man and woman—the very personification 
of filth and wretchedness—wallowing in drunkenness and 
vice—a spectacle too loathsome to be gazed upon with 
impunity. Now a redoubled laugh is heard, as the reeling 
woman makes an ineffectual attempt to seize one of her 
juvenile tormentors; and her husband is prostrated in the 
kennel, overbalanced by a similar effort to punish a puny 
foe. This is, indeed, no overdrawn picture of Anderson 
and his wife, sunk in the depths of degradation. A serious 
paralytic attack, brought on by continued vice and in¬ 
temperance, bore the husband to the verge of the grave; 
but, contrary to all medical expectation, he recovered, with 
only a peculiar involuntary movement of the head, which, as 
he walks along, seems as though it was only slightly attached 
to the body, and gives an odd and almost ludicrous appear¬ 
ance to his tall and blighted figure. They now receive a 
small weekly allowance from some well-to-do relative, and 
are existing (it can scarcely be called living) up one of 
those wretched courts to which I have before alluded. 
This is so far the history of Anderson and his wife, a 
