for another detachment to come down from Mulligan's; but the next lot
will hesitate about playing poker with priests in the train.




The Amateur Gardener



The first step in amateur gardening is to sit down and consider what good
you are going to get by it. If you are only a tenant by the month,
as most people are, it is obviously not of much use for you to plant
a fruit orchard or an avenue of oak trees. What you want is something
that will grow quickly, and will stand transplanting, for when you move
it would be a sin to leave behind you the plants on which you have spent
so much labour and so much patent manure.

We knew a man once who was a bookmaker by trade --
and a Leger bookmaker at that -- but had a passion for horses and flowers.
When he "had a big win", as he occasionally did, it was his custom
to have movable wooden stables, built on skids, put up in the yard,
and to have tons of the best soil that money could buy
carted into the garden of the premises which he was occupying.

Then he would keep splendid horses, and grow rare roses
and show-bench chrysanthemums. His landlord passing by
would see the garden in a blaze of colour, and promise himself
to raise the bookmaker's rent next quarter day.