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.
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