Stern winter is the season in which to keep the eye peeled for the fragile little house plant. It is at that time that the coarse and brutal husband carries the Scandinavian flower known as the Ole Ander, part way down the cellar, and allows it to fall the rest of the way. I carried a large Ole Andor up and down stairs for nine years, until the spring of 1880. That was rather a backward spring, and a pale red cow, with one horn done up in a French twist, ate the most of it as it stood on the porch.
{Illustration: CARRYING OUT THE OLE ANDER.}
This cow was a total stranger to me. I had never done anything for her by which to win her esteem. It shows how Providence works through the humblest means sometimes to accomplish a great good.
I have tried many times to find the postoffice address of that lonely cow, so I might comfort her declining years, but she seemed to have melted away into the bosom of space, for I cannot find her. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of a pale red cow, with one horn done up in a French twist, and wearing a look of settled melancholy, will please communicate the same to me, as we have another Ole Ander that will just about fit her, I think, by spring.
{Illustration: WREAKING VENGEANCE.}
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Bulbs may be wrapped in cotton and put in a cool place in the fall, and fed to the domestic animals in the spring. Geraniums should put on their buffalo overcoats about the middle of November in our rigid northern clime, and in the spring they will have the same luxuriant foliage as the tropical hat-rack. Vines may be left in the room during the winter until the furnace slips a cog and then you can pull them down and feed them to the family horses. In changing your plants from the living rooms or elsewhere to the cellar in the fall, take great care to avoid injury to the pot. I have experienced some very severe winters in my life, but I have never seen the mercury so low that a flowerpot couldn't struggle through and look fresh and robust in the spring. The longevity of the pot is surprising when we consider how much death there is all about it. I had a large brown flower-pot once that originally held the germ of a calla lily. This lily emerged from the soil with the light of immortality in its eye. It got up to where we began to be attached to it, and then it died. Then we put a plant in its place which was given us by a friend. I do not remember now what this plant was called, but I know it was sent to us wrapped up in a piece of moist brown paper, and half an hour later a dray drove up to the house with the name of the plant itself. In the summer it required very little care, and in the winter I would cover the little thing up with its name, and it would be safe till spring. One evening we had a free-for-all musicale at my house, and a corpulent friend of mine tried to climb it, and it died. (Tried to climb the plant, not the musicale.) The plant yielded to the severe climb it. This joke now makes its debut for the first time before the world. Anyone who feels offended with this joke may wreak his vengeance on a friend of mine named Sullivan, who is passionately fond of having people wreak their vengeance on him. People having a large amount of unwreaked vengeance on hand will do well to give him a call before purchasing elsewhere.
