AUGUST. 249 
must go to my Moses and commune with them—go to my Roses, with 
my Silver Cup in my hand, and tell them of our common victory. 
And yet so tired! Tired with racing up and down my Rose beds 
in the anxious process of cutting for the show, roving for ever from 
flower to flower like the butterfly of tuneful memory, but with the 
addition of Rose scissors in one hand, a glorious bloom in the other, 
and a second between my lips, lovingly osculating; and lo, just as I 
reach my exhibition boxes, I remember a third flower, of the same kind 
as those I have brought, and of surpassing merit, and, I need hardly 
say, at the most distant part of my rosarium. Tired, so tired, with 
writing out correct lists of all my running horses; with going up to 
dress for a journey just when one usually undresses for sleep; with 
shooting over 120 miles of rail between midnight and daybreak (1 
wonder what that Roman Emperor, who made such a fuss about losing 
a day, would have said if he had lost a might), and speculating the 
while how my pets were travelling in the capacious van behind (‘‘van 
behind,” I remember to have murmured sleepingly, ‘‘ how can the van 
be behind ?”); with rattling over London stones when London virtuous 
was all abed, and little thinking that through her streets the Lmperor 
Napoleon, with Anna de Diesbach on one side and Madame Vidot on 
the other, were riding on the roof of a cab! with sitting on my Rose 
boxes outside the station at London Bridge, contemplating St. Paul’s, 
and fancying how the dome would look well covered with blooms of 
‘“‘the Cloth of Gold;” with carrying my Roses up the steep and steps 
of Sydenham (‘“‘ John ”—well mot ‘‘ Anderson—we’'ve climbed the hill 
together,” and I thank thee, and those two other helpmates, who brought 
me with a Deal of generous sympathy from the Slough of my great 
despair) ; with arranging, altering, consulting, suggesting, ‘‘ staging ’— 
tired, so tired! 
Wearied from eye to foot, but too happy to surrender to fatigue. 
The eye shows an inclination to connect itself with the Early Closing 
Association, the foot longs to go ‘‘ hootless home ” to rest, and the limbs 
join in the chorus, when “‘to-bed, to-bed, says Sleepy Head ;” but the 
heart derides the idea of somnulence with so much mirthful scorn that 
the rest of the company become quite ashamed of their lassitude, 
prepare themselves to be cupped instead of being couched, and express 
their general readiness to make a night of it. 
And we make a night of it accordingly, and thus. We fill our Silver 
Goblet (we had hoped for another, in letter F, yea after we had seen 
our opponent’s forces drawn out in battle array ; but ‘‘there’s many a 
slip,” you know, and it never reached our labial regions), we fill our 
- pretty goblet with the sparkling waters of Schweppe, corrected with 
Cogniac, for the nights are chill; and we take our seat in our favourite 
arbour, all the Roses blushing around, just as those pretty girls at the 
Rose show stood blushing round us when we gave away our flowers— 
that was, indeed, ‘love among the Roses,” and I almost wept when 
the last was given, and my heart was carried off by those special 
pleaders in about thirty-four different directions—and we light our cigar, 
and think. 
Thankful and pleasant thoughts. It is scarcely more than three 
