Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-05-22
VEXATIONS IN SEED CATALOGS
Adventures of Devoted Reader of Their Encng Page-Some
Benefits Derved-A Question of
Pronunciation.
By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

TTNHE most immoral play ever saw acted
i was RIP Van Winkle," with Joe jefferson
as Rip. The most immoral piece of literature
l ever read was any catalog from a first
class seed house or nursery. Joe Jefferson's 8
Rip was immoral because 1t made you SYM
Pathize so entirely and passionately with a
lazy loafer, and not at all with his poor
abused wife, who was really the one that de.
served the sympathy In this respect life is
sometimes almost immoral as literatureO
The seed catalog is immoral for the simple
reason that 1t makes man spend more than
he can afford; it encourages extravaganza;
it is the arch-foe of the coal man, the grocer,
the tailor and all the army of more or less
worthy and necessarily trusting tradesmen.
If 1t weren't for the seed catalog I don't
say would be rich but at least some other
people wouldn't be quite so poor!
In respect to seed houses, Philadelphia Is
peculiarly immoral city. I don't know
whether there is conspiracy between the
various seedsmen there or not but the fact
remains that I once, in rash moment, or
dered something from one of them, and ever
since l have been annually bombarded with
the most enticing catalogues from the entire
lot-at least, trust it is the entire lot for
If there are any more 1 can't make out where
1t happened in this way: I was walking
along the street in strange town. down in
Connecticut, think, when over a fence in a
pleasant yard saw long border of a pecu-
liar blue flower which looked like phlox Now,
as 1t was May, this seemed to my untutored
mind an impossibility, so I walked into the
strange garden to find out. 1t was phlox, un-
mistakably, This was too good to be truel
I walked up to tho door and rang the bell.
The mistress of the garden, having a true
gardeners SOUL cheerfuly invited me in dug
a catalog out of heap and showed me the
variety. 1t was, she said, the only catalog
she knew which listed this early blue phlox
II was the catalog of a Philadelphia house.
After that, the deluge.
(The phlox, by the way, doesn't stay blue
1t turns a sort OF magenta, rather ugly The
lady of the garden didn't tell me that)
Easy Enough in June
Buying seeds is a good deal like drinking
rum-most OF us don't know when we've had
enough 1t is easy enough to say, about the
third OF June, when you've transplanted all
the ANNALS that your garden can possibly
hold and given away all the seedlings your
neighbors will take, and thrown away the
remainder Reluctantly, and only after last
despairing trip to see If you can't squeeze
'em In somewhere)-it is easy enough then
to say There! Never again for mine Next
year I'll just order a few seeds of the most
necessary varieties and fill up the garden
with perennials" Yes, it is easy enough to
say this on the third day of June, when your
back is doubled up like jack-knife
But can you say II the next January, when
the new catalogs come in? In a word, No.
1t doesn't matter in the least that you have
filled up your garden with perennials, that
you bought Iris germanica in vast uuanti
ties lin spite OF pro-Allies sympathyO the
previous October. lured by a Pennsylvania
catalog which prints color plates of its
iris blooms that nobody can resist-perhans
the most hagrantly immoral cataloR IN
America! 1t doesn't matter that you put in
lily bulbs and narclssus, that you haye two
cold frames, but then under the snowfau of
foxgloYe (pardon-digitalisD and double hoI-
lyhock and campanula seedlings They NAV
die, anyhow, and then what will You fiji the
beds with? You've got to be prepared All |
but II they don't die? Well, then. mako |
some new beds That always appears FEAST
BILE when there is foot of snow on the gar
den, and all you have to do is to 90 out on |
snowshoes and say, "In have the wool |
noWefs mere and the sehryzanthus over
there"
Nor Is 1t possible merely to order a ser |
number OF the old reliables each year. EVERY
scotsman is perpetually getting out some
hing new and printing a satanically temnt-
ng picture OF It on his FIRST page. ana n
foa don't try out these new things what'a
he use in having a garden, anyhow? Re-
iides' your neighbor had a bed OF something
lou didn't have last year ana six more VA.
'tsties Of sweet peas. That win never Az
sweet peas-s-s -sw-here We arel They All
ound allprlns. There IS the Mary Garden.