175 
KEEP YOUR PROMISES. 
PLUM TREE. 
Every year the plum tree is covered with 
an immense quantity of flowers, but unless 
trained and pruned by the hand of an able 
gardener of all its superfluous wood, it will 
only yield fruit once in three years. 
LASTING BEAUTY. 
GILLYFLOWER. 
Fair is the gillyflower of garden sweet. 
GAY. 
The Greeks, who cherished flowers, never 
acquired the art of cultivating and improving 
them. They simply planted them in the 
fields and received as nature yielded them. 
The Romans, with the arts of Greece, also 
received a taste for flowers ; and such was 
their passion for floral crowns that they were 
obliged to confine their use to a favoured few. 
These masters of the world cultivated no- 
