If you
asked him to send you in one of your own artichokes, "THAT I WULL,
MEM," he would say, "WITH PLEASURE, FOR IT IS MAIR BLESSED TO GIVE
THAN TO RECEIVE." Ay, and even when, by extra twisting of the
screw, we prevailed on him to prefer our commands to his own
inclination, and he went away, stately and sad, professing that
"OUR WULL WAS HIS PLEASURE," but yet reminding us that he would do
it "WITH FEELIN'S," - even then, I say, the triumphant master felt
humbled in his triumph, felt that he ruled on sufferance only, that
he was taking a mean advantage of the other's low estate, and that
the whole scene had been one of those "slights that patient merit
of the unworthy takes."
In flowers his taste was old-fashioned and catholic; affecting
sunflowers and dahlias, wallflowers and roses and holding in
supreme aversion whatsoever was fantastic, new-fashioned or wild.
There was one exception to this sweeping ban. Foxgloves, though
undoubtedly guilty on the last count, he not only spared, but
loved; and when the shrubbery was being thinned, he stayed his hand
and dexterously manipulated his bill in order to save every stately
stem. In boyhood, as he told me once, speaking in that tone that
only actors and the old-fashioned common folk can use nowadays, his
heart grew "PROUD" within him when he came on a burn-course among
the braes of Manor that shone purple with their graceful trophies;
and not all his apprenticeship and practice for so many years of
precise gardening had banished these boyish recollections from his
heart.
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