18 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
T HE other day I fell 
among florists. They 
came about me on three sides 
—strange, silent men, not unlike sailors. Their cheeks were 
bronzed, and their eyes held that limpid depth which comes from 
beholding wonders without superfluous comment. Their hands 
were gnarled, big-knuckled—and not altogether clean. Neither 
were their clothes. In fact, their clothes looked as though they 
originally were bought for men twice their size, and then slept 
in beneath a rose bush. They were powdered with dust and 
pollen, and they approached in a heavy cloud of vari-flowered 
aroma and pungent fertilizer saturated with steam. 
It is not easy to understand such men—men who make their 
bread and butter growing roses. So many of us make only the 
bread and butter. And those of us who grow roses scarcely find 
a living in it. But florists find roses—and bread and butter. 
They spend their days coaxing blossoms out of dry seeds, just 
as a sculptor coaxes a living statue out of cold marble. There 
must be some secret to it. Why else should they be silent men? 
There must be some artistry. Why else the blossom? 
Florists do not expect you to understand completely their flower 
creations any more than the sculptor expects you to understand his 
statue. There is a whole lot you cannot understand. There is a 
whole lot they cannot understand. Perhaps that is why they are 
That’s something, eh, Dick ?” 
The battered, broken old 
face lighted up in a cracked 
smile of joy, and the son asked, “But have they made you any¬ 
thing, pater—what has Hale’s Delphinium netted you?” 
The father’s voice broke into a chuckling laugh as he answered: 
“Why, what do I know? You see, Dick, we busted our adding 
machine and I lost my ready reckoner twenty years ago, and I 
never installed a cost system.” He cocked a humorous blue eye 
at his son as he continued, “I suppose if I counted my time at 
fifty cents an hour, and the time of the bees at say ten cents an 
hour, and the interest on the value of the lot compounded semi¬ 
annually, and then stuck in thirty per cent, for overhead charges 
and marketing, I’d have been in the poorhouse on Hale’s Del¬ 
phinium long ago.” He stopped to laugh at his conceit and added 
seriously, “Here’s the way I figure it, Dick: all over the earth 
people glance at these big, jumping spots of blue flower and a 
little thrill of joy hits ’em. They don’t know why, but I do. It’s 
the comeback of the soul to beauty; the reaction of the infinity 
on the human heart. Such ineffable beauty no human hand could 
make; it’s a token of something bigger than us, Dick, in the world 
—God’s visiting cards stuck all around over the earth—to let ’em 
know He’s called. And, being Hale’s Delphiniums, I’m traveling 
in fairly good company, boy. That’s how I figure it!” 
FLORISTS, FOR THE MOST PART 
so silent. 
Of their artistry we know only this: They take a seed or a 
stalk; plant it, graft it, water it, feed it, watch it. Then, when 
you and I have forgotten all about them—seven or eight years 
afterward, perhaps—these strange, silent men with the gnarled 
hands and the limpid eyes and the baggy trousers saunter up and 
hand you a rose—a new rose they’ve been creating all those years. 
Is it worth the trouble? I cannot say. 
Le Bon Dieu, though, must understand. 
D O you know Caleb Hale? He can be 
met in a story by William Allen 
White called “The One a Pharisee.” It 
is in his new volume, “God’s Puppets,” and 
if you haven’t read the book, go buy a 
copy. 
Caleb was born with the gambler’s itch. 
He gambled until the people began refer¬ 
ring to his boy Dick as “the gambler’s child.” 
Then he gave it up, and he came back home, 
to begin over, with a tiny patch of ground 
and a country town florist’s job. Between 
shop and garden he spent the rest of his 
life, creating odd and beautiful flowers. 
What he got out of life—well, we’ll let 
White give you a picture of father and son 
in which Caleb tells his own story: 
<< * * * a s j ie dressed he heard his 
father whistling softly outside where Dick 
knew the elder man was pottering around 
among his garden flowers—probably among 
his delphiniums and bees—playing the old 
game of plant breeding. When he went out 
Dick found his father standing proudly be¬ 
fore the giant stalk of blue that was known 
of men as Hale’s Delphinium. A great 
splash of rich color was smeared across the 
length of the garden and Caleb Hale, with 
his shirt sleeves rolled above' his elbows, 
was poking the earth in the bed, or the next 
moment standing arms akimbo, head on one 
side, squinting at the glory of the proud 
upstanding gorgeous blossoms. The father 
turned at the son’s approach and cried: ‘By 
* * * Johnnie * * * boy * * * aren’t 
they splendid? And to think that all over 
this world, Dick * * * everywhere * * * 
even down in Australia and in South 
America, Idale’s Delphiniums are splotching 
blue in gardens and parks and flowerbeds; 
and all because I took to playing with the 
bees a dozen years ago, to make a flower 
that would stand our dry, hot summers. 
Why, Dick, they’re as hardy as their grand- 
daddies, the larkspur—and never will run 
out; long after I’m gone these things will 
be gladdening the eyes of the world. 
^MMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIjc 
| I KNOW A TRAIL | 
| ON TOBY | 
| I know a trail on Toby, | 
| It leaves the little town | 
| A half a mile behind it | 
| To the climber looking down; | 
= I’ve climbed it many happy times — | 
I I did not climb alone. | 
I know a trail on Toby E 
| Where ferns and grasses meet | 
| To fling a friendly softness | 
| For upward straining feet, E 
| While overhead the hemlocks E 
| And balsam firs are sweet. jjj 
| The May-flower peeps in April | 
1 Beneath the melting snow, j 
The wand of staid October | 
| Sets every tree aglow; I 
i I know a trail on Toby — I 
I It is not all I know. | 
| —Willard Wattles. I 
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A ND to speak further of that company— 
Florists are gardeners because they cannot help it. The 
others are those who garden as an avocation, and those who do it 
because it is the thing to do. With the one it is a life work; with 
the other a relaxation, with the third a fad. 
The first two scorn the third because she takes to gardening 
as she took to this spring’s checks and 
plaids—a style to be cast off to-morrow. 
They know that one cannot flirt with 
healthy loam or chuck a Lilium Cana- 
dense under the chin, or banter small 
talk with egg-plants. They know that the 
success of a garden does not depend upon 
the cut of smock one wears. They also 
know that upon the superficial garden Na¬ 
ture visits a swift and relentless retribution; 
the Zeppelins of her winds scatter by night 
destructive weed seeds; she scorches the 
soil with the flaming liquids of her suns 
and scourges it with the artillery of her 
hails. 
No, gardening is not the sort of thing 
one “takes up.” Nor is it the sort of labor 
for which all men are equally fitted. Rather, 
gardening “takes” you. In some subtle way 
Nature pours an ichor into the blood just 
as she poured a cleansing ichor into the 
blood of Caleb Hale. One becomes her 
slave to do the humble grubbing, sapping 
tasks, her spy against pest foes, her 
trusted ally for the working of mighty 
miracles. 
Gardening is one of Nature’s hospitali¬ 
ties. She who takes it as a fad is scarcely 
permitted to enter the household. For her 
who finds in it an avocation the latch string 
always hangs out that she may come and 
go at will, a trusted friend. The florist 
dwells there, companion of her moods and 
vagaries, sharing the poverty of her drouths 
and the plentitude of her beneficent rains 
and sun. 
But she exacts a peculiar penalty of them. 
They lose their taste for certain things some 
men set store by. Can you imagine a florist 
enjoying a cocktail? Can you see him in 
his baggy trousers at ease in a The Dansant ? 
Visualize, if you can, this man of the limpid 
eyes and the gnarled hands finding his ulti¬ 
mate satisfaction in golf! No, the men 
Nature chooses for that work are modeled 
from a different batch of clay. Their pleas¬ 
ures come in helping plants to grow. They 
speak a language of their own and tread 
a solitary path. 
Queer chaps, florists! 
