JUNE, 167 
“Thoughts like these ensured a special welcome for the Reverend 
Kvelyn Goodhart, our Curate, as he entered our room of assembly. 
We were glad to have our Pastor's sympathy, and to appoint a Chaplain 
to our little band.. Moreover, we ever found in him a cheerful 
companion and an enthusiasti¢ gardener. You may see ample evidence 
of the latter characteristic in and about his cottage home; in his 
delightful garden, which seems to contain everything in miniature, a 
diminutive greenhouse, a small bed of American plants, a little rockery, 
a wee fernery, a tiny fountain, an intricate geometrical design on the 
most reduced of scales. Pretty creepers twining about his porch stoop 
to. weleome you on your arrival, and the Jasmine and the climbing 
tose look at you lovingly through the windows as you take your seat 
within. Passing through the hall—lobby would be more truthful, 
perhaps—you see, generally, a large bowl of wild flowers, gathered 
and admirably grouped by the children of the village school. In the 
Study and Drawing-room are choicer bouquets, either culled from his 
own Liliputian conservatory, or offerings from some brother Spade, and 
arranged, as only ladies can arrange them, by his beautiful sister, Rose 
Goodhart, who shares and gladdens the Curate’s home. At early morn, 
in the sweet summer-tide, you may see him, with his scythe in his 
hand, sweeping down the dewy Grass, until the church bells call him 
to his daily service (‘‘the wust and incurablest form o’ Popery,” 
according to Mrs. Verjuice), and he goes through the quiet graveyard, 
carefully honoured now, and ornamented with flower and shrub, and 
through the chancel-door, by which the 2ose ‘‘ Felicité Perpetuelle ” 
climbs heavenward in emblematic beauty, into the hallowed courts of 
our dear old church. These, too, sometimes are reverently decked by 
our Curate and his little band of Acolytes, and ‘“‘the king’s daughter 
is all glorious within’’ upon her greater festivals with flower and 
branch, just as under the Older Testament, but now in substance and 
no more in type, the chapiters were covered with Pomegranates, ‘‘ and 
upon the top of the pillars was Lily work.’’ I like to see the children 
(but dont tell Verjuice) bringing the long ropes, covered round with 
evergreens, from their schoolroom, to festoon the arches, and encircle 
the pillars; and yet more do I delight to watch them, hurrying home 
from wood, and bank, and brook, with their pretty posies in their hands. 
It pleases me most to see the fresh spring flowers at Easter, the 
bunches of Primroses and Violets smiling at intervals upon the dark 
green Yew; but those children tell me, and this of course, that the old 
church is most beautiful upon their own festival, the which, being held 
upon St. Luke’s Day, brings Dahlias in clothes -baskets to our Curate, 
-until the glowing glass in our painted windows begins to pale its 
ineffectual fire, and our frivolous damsels to complain on the Sunday 
that their best bonnets have not fair play. 
Our Curate is not only a lover of flowers himself but a zealous 
missionary florist. He was instrumental in establishing our Cottage- 
Gardening Society, which has reclaimed many a waste place from the 
weeds, many a sot from the beerhouse, and brought comfort to many 
a home. I remember Tom Cooper’s garden, for instance, as the 
favoured residence of every known British weed, and as the favoured 
st 
