Morning journal and courier., 1881-02-08
A French Flower Doctor.

The seed is sown, and the young plants, as they peep out, have to be transplanted
 Herein is said to be one of the arts of gar dening. The experienced man can distin- guish between the young plants which will produce double and single blossoms. A choice has to be made unless the horticulturist wishes to run the risk of losing the benefit of his labors by producing single flowers when double ones only are in demand. With wall flowers and asters more than ordinary care is required, and the florist who cannot judge for himself has to have recourse to the services of the esstmpleur, who goes about from garden to garden giving consultation and advice in the same manner as 8 docter calls on his patients and gives them the benefit of his superior knowledge, writing out prescriptions, etc. As fast as one flower is done with, it is replaced by another, for the maxim of the gardener is never to allow any portion of his ground to remain idle. The essimpleur has learned how to become 8 prophet in his own country, he is looked up to by his fellow men, his opinions, technical and political, are respected, and honors are showered on him with a lavish hand.
 An anecdote is told of one of these persons, who has been returned for the eleventh time as mayor of his Commune. He has been nicknamed Pere Andre, and his reputation as essinepIeu7 has been established for upward of @ quarter of 8 century. He is known for miles round, and his assertions are implicitly D6I6VeQ III ana are 8S uuAlb6raDl6 db the l6WS of the Medes and Persians. He Is a fatherly sort of man, never abusing the power con- ferred on him by the tricolored sash he winds round his abdomen on high days and hol- idays On Sunday last he put on his best at- tire, for he had offered himself as candidate having expired. He took his seat in the viii lage school-room on Sunday morning, with the gendarme sent down from Tarascon to repress any attempt at rebellion. At the last moment something had gone wrong with the ballot-box, and it had to be replaced by the broad beaver of the mayor. As each of his constituents came in he told them that he knew which way they would vote, and he asked them to put the ballot tickets of the radical village cobbler, who opposed him as the candidate of the eleventh hour, /" brought forward by group of ardent politicians, in the cooked hat of the gendarme or in the hat before him, as they liked. When, the hour for closing the ballot had sounded, the elec- tors were again admitted to the school and votes were publicly counted. The constitu- ents of the cobbler, numbering between thirty and forty, were very particular, but they found that the ballot had been con ducted with scrupulous exaetitude, and the result, received with cries of ''Vive le Pere Andre!'' caused his opponent to come forward and shake hands with the successful candidate shrewdly suspected by the gendarme of hay ing induced the Radical Intransigente party to bring forward an antagonist to increase his own popularity. Politics are not held in much favor by the villagers. They concen- trate their minds on the all-fmportant subject of flower growing, and Pere Andre, in his double capacity as essimpleur and agent of several large Paris buyers, is not only mayor, but king of the village. Public rumor says that his daughter will have handsome dow " when she can find husband who can dis tinguish himself from out her suitors by his knowledge of her fathers occupation, and the hand of pretty Madeline will be the re- ward of the best essinapgeatr of the locality.