Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

I am most anxious that anybody who does not care for old Herbals should pass over those catalogued in March ; but, on the other hand, that those who are interested in gardening should look through the Novem- ber list of books, as they will find many modern ones mentioned there which may be useful to them for practical purposes. My hope and wish is that my reader will take me by the hand ; for I do not reap, and I do not sow. I am merely, like so many other women of the past and present, a patient gleaner in the fields of knowledge, and absolutely dependent on human sympathy in order to do anything at all. I cannot explain too much that the object of my book is to try to make everyone think for him or herself, and at the same time to profit by the instruction which in these days is so easy to get, and is all around us. Women are still behind the other sex in the power of thinking at all, much more so in the power of thinking of several things at once. I hope the coming women may see the great advantage of training their minds early in life to be a practical denial of Swift's cynical assertion that ' mankind B2 4 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN are as unfit for flying as for thinking.' Nothing can be done well without thought — certainly not gardening, nor house- keeping, nor managing children. A curious example of this is given in a recently published account of the most famous of modern jugglers. He says that he trained his brain in youth to exert itself in three different ways at the same time. This no doubt is the reason that he is now pre-eminent in his own line. January 3rd. — I will begin by telling you that I was brought up for the most part in the country, in a beautiful, wild, old-fashioned garden. This garden, through circumstances, had remained in the hands of an old gardener for more than thirty years, which carries us back nearly a century. Like so many young people I see about me now, I cared only for the flowers growing, that I might have the pleasure of pick- ing them. Mr. Euskin says that it is luxurious and pleasure-loving people who like them gathered. Garden- ing is, I think, essentially the amusement of the middle- aged and old. The lives of the young, as a rule, are too full to give the time and attention required. Almost all that has remained in my mind of my young days in this garden is how wonderfully the old man kept the place. He succeeded in flowering many things year after year with no one to help him, and with the frost in the valley to contend against in spring. It was difficult, too, for him to get seeds or plants, since the place was held by joint owners, whom he did not like to ask for them. The spot was very sheltered, and that is one of the greatest of all secrets for plant cultivation. An ever-flowing mill-stream ran all round the garden ; and the hedges of China-roses, Sweetbriar, Honeysuckle, and white Hawthorn tucked their toes into the soft mud, and throve year after year. The old man was a philosopher in his way, and when on a cold March morning my JANUARY 5