cumstances attending its normal head, and tried a fresh departure
from the stock--a "back growth," as we call it, after the fashion I have
described. In the third year then, there were two heads. In the fourth
year, the chief of them had dwindled to less than one inch and the
thickness of a straw, while the second struggled into growth with pain
and difficulty, reached the size of a grain of wheat, and gave it up.
Needless to say that the wicked and unfortunate proprietor had not seen
trace of a bloom. Then at length, after five years' torment, he set it
free, and I took charge of the wretched sufferer. Forthwith he began to
show his gratitude, and at this moment--the summer but half through--his
leading head has regained all the strength lost in three years, while
the back growth, which seemed dead, outtops the best bulb my predecessor
could produce.

And I have perhaps a hundred in like case, cripples regaining activity,
victims rescued on their death-bed. If there be a placid joy in life
superior to mine, as I stroll through my houses of a morning, much
experience of the world in many lands and many circumstances has not
revealed it to me. And any of my readers can attain it, for--in no
conventional sense--I am my own gardener; that is to say, no male being
ever touches an orchid of mine.

One could hardly cite a stronger argument to demolish the superstitions
that still hang around this culture. If a busy man, journalist,
essayist, novelist, and miscellaneous _litterateur_, who lives by his
pen, can keep many hundreds of orchids in such health that he is proud
to show them to experts--with no help whatsoever beyond, in emergency,
that which ladies of his household, or a woman-servant give--if he can
do this, assuredly the pursuit demands little trouble and little
expense. I am not to lay down principles of cultivation here, but this
must be said: orchids are indifferent to detail. There lies a secret.
Secure the general conditions necessary for their well-doing, and they
will gratefully relieve you of further anxiety; neglect those general
conditions, and no care will reconcile them. The gentleman who reduced
my Cattleya to such straits gave himself vast pains, it is likely,
consulted no end of books, did all they recommend; and now declares that
orchids are unaccountable. It is just the reverse. No living things
follow with such obstinate obedience a few most simple laws; no machine
produces its result more certai