omething feminine about poets.
They like the result, but they ignore the process, just as a woman eats
a lamb cutlet, but does not want you to talk about the slaughter-house.
Perhaps it is not to be expected that poets should mention the food of
the roses, and yet I hate a shirker of facts. I am not sure that there
is not something of poetry in the plain truth that in nature's impartial
chemistry there is only one step from muck to glory.

And now, if you are tired of uninformative talk about roses, I will tell
you the story of

THE BLESSED ARTIST

There was once an artist who lived in a great town. He was painting a
picture, and he took a great deal of trouble to make it as difficult for
himself as possible. He tried for effects of lighting that needed
miracles. In his work he sought and worshipped difficulties. In the
garden beyond the studio he found plenty of difficulty without seeking
for it. But this was difficulty of a kind that maddened him. He wanted a
garden, but he did not want to make a garden. So he employed a man one
day a week, and was profoundly dissatisfied.

One afternoon he had a dream. He dreamed that an angel came into his
room--a beautiful angel of the accepted Dore Gallery type. The angel had
a pleasant voice and said pleasant things to him.

"You have lived well," said the angel, "and you have worked well. You
have earned for yourself the blessedness that belonged to the Garden of
Eden. That blessedness shall fall upon your garden. Go and look at it."

So the artist went out on to his lawn and was quite surprised. It was of
one beautiful tint of fresh green all over, with never a brown spot.
There had been many daisies on that lawn, but they had all gone now. It
had suffered from moss, but the moss had vanished. It had been
superficially irregular, but it was now level. The perfect grass was
just three-quarters of an inch in height, and no tall bents stuck up
anywhere. He went to look at his roses. He remembered them as they had
formerly been--spindly bushes which he had forgotten to prune, and that
bore leaves only at the extreme end of their branches. They had changed
to compact bushes that were green all over and flowered like an
illustration in a seedsman's catalogue. Caterpillars had played havoc
with them aforetime, but now he could find no caterpillar and no trace
of the caterpillar's work. He went on to his two apple trees. They had
borne no blossom that year that he could remembe