Page images
PDF
EPUB

SAMUEL REYNOLDS HOLE

MY GARDEN

[Address by S. Reynolds Hole, Church of England clergyman, Dean of Rochester since 1887 (born in Caunton, England, December 5, 1819; ———————), delivered at the annual festival of the Royal Gardeners' Benevolent Society, held in London, May 18, 1900. The Duke of Portland was in the chair.]

YOUR GRACE, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:-I have passed eighty milestones on the journey of life, being now, as the old gardener described himself, an octo-geranium [laughter], and my route has gone up to the highest summits and to the lowest depths. I have dined in a royal palace with the best queen that ever sat upon a throne, and I have taken tea-they said it was tea-with paupers in cottages of mud. I have lived with peasants and with princes, with millionaires and mechanics. I have had many famous men for my friends-statesmen and judges, and generals, and admirals, authors and artists-and there is no greater artist than the man who beautifies the land on which he lives. [Cheers.] I have been intimate with all sorts and conditions of men. I have been a friend to famous men, and I have tried to be a friend to infamous men-for I have been in a thieves' kitchen. High and low, rich and poor, with all sorts and conditions of men I have lived my life.

I have had a large amount of work, and I have had a large amount of play. They are not incongruous; they are inseparable from success. I sat one night by the side. of my friend Mr. Thackeray, at a "Punch" dinner, and opposite to us sat Tom Taylor, who had just brought out two dramas, one at St. James's and the other at the Hay

market Theatre, and he was in a silent and gloomy mood. Thackeray said to me, "All play and no work makes Tom a dull boy." [Laughter.] I have had a very varied experience of recreation, and I would rather speak of this to-night than of business and duty.

I took out a certificate for game when I was seventeen years of age, and I repeated that process for half a century. I have been very fond of all sorts of games, beginning with the grandest game of all, cricket. [Hear, hear.] I have seen Lillywhite bowling to Fuller Pilch. But all my life I have loved a garden. The instinct may be suppressed. It is too often suppressed by the cares and more exciting pleasures of this life, but it is born in us all. It takes us with delight to the banks on which the violets grow, to the woods of the primrose, to the old hedges which used to be, before modern farming began, bowered over with wild roses, and to the buttercups and cowslips of the mead; and I have found this after fourscore years I maintain thisthat there is no recreation which brings so much happiness and brightness into a man's life as the recreation of horticulture. [Cheers.]

The love of a garden, like love itself, like charity, never fails. The time comes when the horseman deviates from the stiff timber and the flowing brook and seeks peace and safety through the gate into the lane. [Laughter.] The time comes to the gunner when the erratic jacksnipe, the nimble cony, the driven partridge and pheasant elude his aim; the time comes when the batsman arrives too late, and is run out, panting and breathless; or when, missing a catch, he is insulted with a question having reference to the price of butter [laughter]; but the joys of horticulture never fail, from the time when the baby tries to grip the artificial flower from its nurse's bonnet to the time. of the octo-geranium [laughter], until the time when a man stands before his friends, as now, with snow on his head but with summer always in his heart. [Cheers.] I stand here to return thanks for horticulture.

There is not a gardener here to-night who won't join in the general thanksgiving and for the special mercies which are vouchsafed to us of this generation. First let me speak of the grand additions which have been made to horticulture through the zeal and enterprise of the im

porter (it is impossible to mention that word without thinking of our friend Harry Veitch), and through the skill of the cultivators-the gardeners, the working gardeners, to whom we owe so much, and to whom we are invited to-night to give help in their time of need. On Wednesday next let every one go and see in the Temple Gardens the magnificent demonstrations of progress, from the orchids at five hundred pounds to the little rock-plants at sixpence. Do you know which is the most beautiful? -I don't.

Again, I think we are to be congratulated on the great improvement which has been made in our garden literature. There never was a time when there was such abundant and able information from our horticultural press. Never since the days of Hooker, Loudon, and Paxton have there been works more helpful to the gardener than "The Flower Garden" of William Robinson, "The History of Gardening," by Miss Amherst, and the fascinating works by Miss Jekyll on "Wood and Garden." I welcome the sentimental element which has been introduced into the works on gardening, that element which appeals to the intellect and to the imagination. I have known so many young persons, anxious for information about the garden, who have been deterred by the dullness and monotony of those books which are written to instruct them. I even venture to plead for occasional gleams of humor.

Half a century ago it seemed to me that the garden promoted the greatest joy and usefulness of my life, and I tried to communicate to others the happiness which I had found myself. I wrote accordingly to the "Gardeners' Chronicle" and to "The Florist," and although I was denounced as frivolous by a few stolid philosophers, I received such encouragement on the whole that I spread my wings and took a higher flight, and in a little book which I wrote about roses [cheers] I have, from that time to this, achieved the influence which I most desired to possess.

I think that we have great reason to be thankful, and to congratulate each other that not only has the love of gardening increased, but there is a far more refined ambition as to the arrangement of the garden. Some people

say that it is a retrograde movement; but I say, when you go back to our old style, the English or the natural style, it may be retrograde, but it is the return of the vagabond to the right way. I do not depreciate for a moment the value of the introduction of half-hardy plants. I think there are places in which they are most appropriate. I do not fail to admire their combination with stonework around the palace, the castle, or other spacious mansion. These form a beautiful frame, but this arrangement is not a garden; a garden is a place of seclusion, of meditation and restful peace. A garden is a place in which you collect the most beautiful things that you can procure, and in which you arrange them to be as like nature as ever you can make them.

I will direct your attention to one point more. This horticulture, this beautiful blessing with which God has enriched your life and mine, should not be restricted to the rich or even to the middle classes, but it should be offered to the working man. [Cheers.] I rejoice in the efforts which are being made by the great landed proprietors and by the county councils to promote this object. I will only say of it, from long experience, that if you can once get a man to see that he can grow things pleasant to the eye and good for food, and at the same time teach, as the county councils in many instances are trying to teach, his wife how to cook them, you will have done more to keep that man from the public house than by any other process. [Hear, hear.] Your Grace, my lords, and gentlemen, I thank you for this expression of your sympathy. I knew that I should have it, for it never fails in our brotherhood, and in grateful acknowledgment I wish from my heart that you may have the blessing which has been given to methe life, the happy life of a gardener. For

He wanders away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sings to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seems long,
Or his heart begins to fail,
She will sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvelous tale.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

PRACTICAL ETHICS OF THE PHYSICIAN

[Address by Dr. O. W. Holmes, poet, essayist, novelist, Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University, 1847-82 (born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809; died in Boston, October 7, 1894), delivered in Boston, to the medical graduates of Harvard University, at the annual commencement, March 10, 1858.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS:-It is my grateful duty to address you a few words in the name of the Medical Faculty, under the auspices of which you have just entered the Medical Profession. In their name I welcome you to the labors, the obligations, the honors, and the rewards which, if you are faithful, you may look for in your chosen calling. In their name I offer you the hand of fellowship, and call you henceforth brothers. These elder brethren of the same great family repeat to you the words of welcome. The wide community of practitioners receive you in full communion from this moment. You are enrolled hereafter on that long list of the Healers of men, which stretches back unbroken to the days of Heroes and Demigods, until its earliest traditions blend with the story of the brightest of the ancient Divinities.

Once Medicine Doctor, always Doctor Medicinæ. You can unfrock a clergyman and unwed a husband, but you can never put off the title you have just won. Trusting that you will always cling to it, as it will cling to you, shall venture to offer a few hints which you may find of use in your professional career.

The first counsel I would offer is this: Form a distinct plan for life, including duties to fulfil, virtues to prac

« PreviousContinue »