I know it
for a fact, that in a certain cemetery the "Sons of the American
Revolution" have for years been prevented from setting up their modest
marks of commemoration upon the graves of Revolutionary heroes, because
they would be in the way of the sexton's lawn-mower.
Now in New Orleans the case is so different that really the amateur
gardener elsewhere has not all his rights until he knows why it is so
different. Let us, therefore, look into it. In that city one day the
present writer accosted an Irishman who stood, pruning-shears in hand,
at the foot of Clay's statue, Lafayette Square. It was the first week of
January, but beside him bloomed abundantly that lovely drooping jasmine
called in the books _jasminum multiflorum_.
"Can you tell me what shrub this is?"
"That, sor, is the _monthly flora!_ Thim as don't know the but-hanical
nayum sometimes calls it the stare jismin, but the but-hanical nayum is
the _monthly flora_."
The inquirer spoke his thanks and passed on, but an eager footfall
overtook him, his elbow felt a touch, and the high title came a third
time: "The but-hanical nayum is the _monthly flora_."
The querist passed on, warmed by a grateful esteem for one who, though
doubtless a skilled and frequent tinkler of the lawn-mower within its
just limitations, was no mere dragoon of it, but kept a regard for
things higher than the bare sod, things of grace in form, in bloom, in
odor, and worthy of "but-hanical nayum.
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