And yet it is a remorseless business, turning up the little faces to see if they have lived long enough to be ready for the guillotine. They look straight _at_ you, and some of them shrink and some beseech, and some are mutely resigned. I am no stern Atropos, I am weak before the fate I bring and often let it go; and if by mistake I snip off a bud I hurry on and try to forget it. Has the divinity who lays us low also, I wonder, his moments of compunction--does he ever hold his hand and say “One more day”? Or does he snip here and there at random “just choosing so”? Oh Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos, I do not like your rôle, I am glad I am not an omnipotent Whim; I hope my garden thinks better of me than that. The prevailing expression among pansies, by the way, is that of apprehension; I hope this is a botanical fact and not confined to my pansies. Nothing is more annoying in a small way in this world than to see your tastes reflected in those whom you consider inferior to yourself. You would rather not share anything with such persons, even a preference. I have to submit to this vexation. There are others hereabouts, whom I have got into the habit of looking down upon, who have exactly my idea of gardening. I hasten to say that they are not people in the ordinary sense of the term. Bold, indeed, would be the non-official worm, in this bureaucratic stronghold, who should point to any gazetted creature about him and say “That is a lesser thing than I.” Society would smile and decline to be deceived. For this is an ordered Olympus, the gods go in to dinner by Regulation, their rank and pay is published in Kalends which anybody may buy, and the senior among them are diligently worshipped by the junior as “brass hats.” No, it would certainly not be for the Tiglath-Pilesers who never sent back a parcel to the draper’s tied up in red tape in their lives, not having a yard of it in the house for any purpose, to give themselves airs over persons who use it every day. But even a non-official may look down upon a monkey. My offensive imitators are monkeys.