ld a flower so naturally wild, so secluded
in its loveliness, so fond of shady nooks and comparatively deep water,
be made to expand its shy petals and exhale its rare perfume in a vulgar
tub? Yet is it true. Like the noblest beauty of every kind, it blesses
despite captivity and ignoble surroundings.

Last spring I determined to give the cultivation of the water-lily a
trial, and impressed an old lime hogshead into the service. This I had
sawed through the middle, and one half sunk in the ground at the
north-east end of the veranda, under the rain-spout. Then, armed with a
big basket and a long rake, two of us started for the pond, about a mile
distant, where the lilies grew. Some of the leaves, as yet all rolled
together, were just peeping from the water.

The process of dragging out the roots was rather difficult, but
exhilarating. First, we threw out the long rake, let it sink, worked it
down into the mud as far as practicable, and then pulled together with
all our strength. At every pull we brought up a long piece of the fleshy
root with several leaves just sprouting; but every pull, or rather every
yielding of a root, resulted in our sudden sitting down on the marshy
ground with peals of laughter. This was the exhilarating part. We placed
the roots, with all the doughy clay adhering, in the basket, and tugged
it home with many pauses for rest and frequent changing of hands. The
basket seemed freighted with lead, and the dripping of yellow mud was
not improving to the appearance of shoes and stockings.

Seeing the kind of bed the lily flourished in in the pond, we did not
dare trust the roots to common mould, and therefore packed the bottom of
the tub a foot deep with the common swamp-muck used on the farm. In this
we planted the roots, put in several pails of cistern-water, and left
the rain, already falling, to do the rest. The next morning the tub was
full of the dirtiest-looking liquid imaginable. It did not become
perfectly clear for several weeks; and then our labor was rewarded by
the sight of numerous little folded leaves, which soon reached the top
and unfolded their satiny, green surface upon the water. The smallness
of the leaves troubled me greatly at first, not knowing that they grow
broad after opening. After patient waiting, and after covering the tub
with mosquito-netting to disabuse the young turkeys of the notion that
it was specially designed as a drinking-cup and a watery grave for them,
and t