ay that a
riverside cottage lets better if it has a pergola and no dining-room
than if it has a dining-room and no pergola. My pergola is built of
rustic wood creosoted, which costs very little. It forms a big
semicircle with a short tail projecting from the middle of the curve. On
it I grow ramblers and glory-roses. I told an expert with some pride
what I had done.

"Yes," said the expert sadly and thoughtfully, "almost any rose does
well in London, except the Gloire-de-Dijon."

My glory-roses look all right at present, but he is probably correct.
When you do a work and do not know how to do it, you are handicapped.
Almost the first thing I did in the way of gardening was to put in some
gaillardias, which I had bought in a box. Three of them died. It takes a
good deal to kill a gaillardia. Things that I plant now do not die. I am
certainly getting on. I shall soon be able to say Gloire-de-Dijon when I
mean glory-rose.

Perfection is not for me. But there are some pleasant halting-places
this side of it. I consult that book for amateur gardeners at intervals,
principally because it is such a delight to be able to skip the long
chapter about sea-kale. I still struggle, and tell myself frequently
that I shall continue to struggle. But, as I have said, there are
pleasant halting-places this side of perfection, and I have a great
tendency to get out at the next station.

When that tendency comes over me I try to remember the smallness of my
garden. In a small garden you may cut the caterpillar nests off the
scarlet thorn, and burn them to ashes so that no spark of life remains.
You feel sure that not one caterpillar is left in the garden. You may
then get to work and pick caterpillars off the rose trees. You may hunt
the ubiquitous green fly. You may weed properly with a small fork,
instead of perfunctorily with a hoe, after the manner of the jobbing
gardener. In time of drought you can water everything. In a small garden
much is possible.

It is not exactly a garden yet, of course. The author of that book for
amateurs would drop dead from shock if he saw it. But it is more like a
garden than the cankered cat-walk it once was.

By the way, speaking of a garden in London, you may possibly have heard
the story of

THE POOL IN THE DESERT

There was once a desert. Now I come to think of it, there still is.

Across the desert, mounted on three camels, came the millionaire, the
artist, and the analyst. During the da