me
process of burning, which we used to get in the iron and coal
districts of Yorkshire, which I used to think very pretty, but I do
not know what it is called.

Good walks are a great luxury. It is a wise economy to go round your
walks after rain and look for little puddles; make a note of where the
water lodges and fill it up. Keep gratings swept. If the grating is
free and there is an overflow not to be accounted for, it is very
possible that a drain-pipe somewhere is choke-full of the roots of
some tree.

Some people advise hacking up your walks from time to time, and other
people advise you not. Some people say there is nothing like salt to
destroy walk weeds and moss, and brighten the gravel, and some people
say that salt in the long run feeds the ground and the weeds. I am
disposed to think that, in a Little Garden, there is nothing like a
weeding woman with an old knife and a little salt afterwards. It is
also advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that
the weeds come up by the roots! Next to the cast-iron back before
mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used for
scrubbing floors), as a gardener's comfort.

I hope, if you have been bulb planting, that you got them all in by
Lord Mayor's Day. Whether bulbs should be planted deep or shallow is
another "vexed question." In a Little Garden, where you don't want to
disturb them, and may like to plant out some small-rooted annuals on
the top of them later on, I should plant deep.

If you are planting roses, remember that two or three, carefully
planted in good stuff that goes deep, will pay you better than six
times the number stuck _into a hole_ in cold clay or sand or builders'
rubbish, and left to push their rootlets as best they can, or perish
in the attempt. Spread out these rootlets very tenderly when planting.
You will reap the reward of your gentleness in flowers. Rose roots
don't like being squeezed, like a Chinese lady's feet. I was taught
this by one who knows,--He has a good name for the briar suckers and
sprouts which I hope you carefully cut off from your grafted
roses,--He calls it "the old Adam!"

Yours, &c.

LETTER III.

"A good rule
Is a good tool."

DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,

January is not a month in which you are likely to be doing much in
your Little Garden. Possibly a wet blanket of snow lies thick and
white over all its hopes and anxieties. No doubt you made all tidy,
and s