I was just going to say, when that foolish story interrupted me, that Cardinal Newman wrote a book called "Apologia pro vita sua." I mention it not as a discovery but as a reminder. I believe that almost every imaginative author writes an _Apologia pro vita sua_, though under a different title and in a different guise. I could name one author (and so, of course, could you) who has written several such apologiæ. If I have never done it myself, it is because I am not of the heroic type which undertakes lost causes. But I am not quite sure that I am not writing an _Apologia pro horto meo_. There is a serpent in every Eden, and its name is Pride. If my half-acre of cat-walk can claim to be a remote descendant of Eden, the serpent exists there too. I point out the good things in the garden. I cover up the defects, or--which is even worse--I make elaborate explanations to prove that they are not defects at all. I cannot expect anybody to like my garden as much as I do, but I want them to respect it. Jokes about it always seem to me to be in bad taste. A very good amateur gardener once came into my garden and mentioned just a few of the things that he noticed. He did it in the kindliest way. He taught me quite a good deal, and I hope he will never know how near I came to beating him on the head with the business end of a large rake. I think that what I have said about omission is true. Everybody who loves art loves omission. I should like, for instance, if I could, to write in the fewest words that lucidity requires. It has given me pleasure to omit certain things from my garden. But all the same--and I may as well confess it--fewer things would be omitted from my garden if it were larger and in the heart of the country, and if I had somebody to help me, and if by chance I happened to know something about it. CHAPTER III ROSES: AND THE STORY OF "THE BLESSED ARTIST" The terminology of the botanist is a standard joke, but as a matter of fact, the botanist blunders into a good thing sometimes. It was rather a fine idea to have in plants an order of those that bear the cross--cruciferæ. The turnip and sea-kale are among those whose petals make the sign, but it need not shock us. Is there not loveliness in the flower of the potato, and poetry in the foliage of the asparagus? On the whole, I think the botanist makes me less angry than the horticulturist.