
Have You 
| Heard About My Gladiolus? 
You haven’t heard about my gladiolus? Well, then, it’s a sure thing that 
you don’t live in the town where I do, or take the trains I do to business in 
New York. Practically all of my fellow-commuters and neighbors know. about 
my gladiolus. They can’t escape them. If I don’t show the flowers—or hold 
them coyly for everyone to see—I talk to my friends about my beautiful blooms. 
“You're a pest, eh,” you say? Well the foregoing is exaggerated, maybe quite 
a bit—but there’s a kernel of truth in it—I do love gladiolus. And I get a big 
kick out of them. 
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t grow them for sale. I have no commercial inter- 
est in them whatever. All I do is grow them for my own entertainment and 
fun and enjoyment, and my pleasure in them spills out among friends and 
people in the company I work for. 
Perhaps the oddest thing of all about my gladiolus growing is that in three 
short years I have begun to be a bit of an expert on them—in a very small 
way of course. A sort of a two-bit, Model T expert. But that’s better than 
knowing nothing special about anything, isn’t it? In fact, in my own circle I 
am looked upon as quite a clever fellow with bulbs. And I have no more of a 
green thumb than I have pink eye or yellow jaundice. 
I’m just a city-bred fellow who moved out into the country in middle life 
and discovered the joys of gardening, and then went on to specialize in the 
king of flowers, the gladiolus. 
* * * oe * 
In my business I have to do quite a lot of studying to determine what results 
I get in sales from spending time and money in various kinds of advertising or 
selling. 
After I got interested in gladiolus and started growing them, I applied my 
business technique to studying my gardening time and expenses. I found that 
hour for hour and dollar for dollar, growing gladiolus gives me the greatest 
satisfaction of any hobby I ever had, and that includes stamp collecting, play- 
ing the piano, and the normal run of hobbies that most people try. 
