grow. No green things can
exist. A sheet of paper exposed to the open air becomes black in three
seconds, and a thick layer of carbon covers everything. There are many
people who believe this. I was told so only the other night by a
beautiful lady to whom I had inadvertently jabbered about my garden. By
the way, she was wearing a white dress. Why?

The fact is that there are as many smuts as one can reasonably want--and
perhaps a few more--in the city and in Mayfair. There are not so many as
there used to be, because there is less smoke. Electricity does not
smoke. Up in St John's Wood and Hampstead the smuts are very much
diminished. Probably if I climbed one of my trees I should find my hands
black. But I am not a boy nor a gorilla, that I should do this thing. I
read or write in the garden, and I find that no smut settles on the
white page. I dine under the tall trees, and the white cloth remains
unpolluted. I may possibly get an elm-seed in my soup, but that is
another matter. (Can anyone tell me, by the way, why the elm produces
such an amazing lot of seeds and sows them broadcast, with a preference
for places where they can never by any possibility germinate?) This is
all quite contrary to tradition, but it happens to be the truth.

There is a good time coming--the time when smoke will be eliminated. The
London garden will doubtless be an easier and cleaner matter then. But
meanwhile the London garden is not impossible. The evergreens are
distinctly shop-soiled after the winter; but with the summer comes the
fresh green, and in the summer London provides us with less smoke from
fewer fires. Beautiful white dresses must be washed or cleaned, and
after all the garden has its hose and its rain-showers.

The tradition is inept as it stands, but it has a basis of truth. There
is very much that must be omitted in the London garden. There are
flowers that never come to town. Speaking generally, bulbs will do less
work here than they will in the country. After the first year the tulips
get tired. But as a compensation for the many things which one must
omit, come the many other things which one may omit.

The liberty of the subject is too much circumscribed, but I believe that
there is no law in this country which compels a man to grow the Jacoby
geranium. This does not seem to be generally understood. Look at the
window-boxes of London, and look at the gardens. Mayfair as a rule is
ambitious and kills quite pretty th