University of Virginia Library

A SOLEMN FACT.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 677EAF. Page 057. In-line Illustration. Image of an old woman and a young woman looking at an arrangement of flowers on a small table.]

YOUR plants are most flagrantly
odious,” said
Mrs. Partington, as she
stooped over a small oval
red table in a neighbor's
house, which table was covered
with cracked pots filled
with luxuriant geraniums, and
a monthly rose, and a cactus,
and other bright creations,
that shed their sweetness upon
the almost tropical atmosphere
of a southerly room in April, while a fragrant
vine, hung in chains, graced the window with a curtain
more gorgeous than any other not exactly like it. Mrs.
Partington stood gazing upon them in admiration.

“How beautiful they are!” she continued. “Do you
profligate your plants by slips, mem?”

She was told that such was the case; they were propagated
by slips.

“So was mine,” said Mrs. P. “I was always more
lucky with my slips than with anything else.”

Bless thy kind old heart, Mrs. Partington! it may
be so with you, but it is not so with all; for the way
of the world is hard, and many slips are made, and
for the unfortunates whose feet or tongues slip on the

treacherous path, a sentence generally awaits which
admits small chance of reversal, — a soiled coat or a
soiled character sticking to them until both are worn out.
Dear old lady! your humble chronicler remembers that
many of the young and beautiful are profligated by
slips, — slips so gradual that propriety could hardly call
them such at first, — which end, heaven and earth and
perdition know how deep.