
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 
i 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. 
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. 
