I am not going to write a gardening book, or a cookery book, or a book on furnishing or education. Plenty of these have been published lately. I merely wish to talk to you on paper about several subjects as they occur to me throughout one year; and if such desultory notes prove to be of any use to you or others, so much the better. One can only teach from personal knowledge ; yet how exceedingly limited that is !

The fact that I shall mention gardening every month will give this subject preponderance throughout the book. At the same time I shall in no way attempt to supersede books on gardening, that are much fuller and more complete than anything I could write. For those who care to learn gardening in the way I have learnt, I may mention, before I go further, three books which seem to me absolutely essential-'The English Flower Garden,' by W. Robinson; 'The Vegetable Garden,' translated from the French, edited by W. Robinson; and Johnson's 'Gardener's Dictionary,' by C. H. Wright and D. Dewar. This last supplies any deficiencies in the other two, and it teaches the cultivation of plants under glass.

The cookery book to which I shall refer is 'Dainty Dishes,' by Lady Harriet Sinclair. It is an old one, and has often been reprinted. I have known it all my married life, and have found no other book on cooking so useful, so clear, or in such good taste. It is the only English cookery book I know that has been translated into German.

I have given you the names of these books, as it is through them I have learnt most of what I know, both in gardening and cooking. It is, however, undeniable that, as the old proverb says, you may drag a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink ; and unless, when I name plants or vegetables for the table, you look them up in the books, you will derive very little benefit from these notes.

Just now it seems as if everybody wrote books which nobody reads. This is probably what I am doing myself; but, so far as gardening is concerned, at any rate, I have read and studied very hard, as I began to learn quite late in life. I never buy a plant, or have one given me, without looking it up in the books and providing it with the best treatment in my power. If a plant fails, I always blame myself, and feel sure I have cultivated it wrongly. No day goes by without my studying some of my books or reading one or more of the very excellent gardening newspapers that are published weekly. This is how I also learnt cooking when I was younger, always going to the book when a dish was wrong. In this way one becomes independent of cooks and gardeners, because, if they leave, one can always teach another. Nothing is more unjust than the way a great many people find fault with their gardeners, and, like the Egyptians of old, demand bricks without straw. How can a man who has had little education and no experience be expected to know about plants that come from all parts of the world, and require individual treatment and understanding to make them grow here at all? Or how can a cook be expected to dress vegetables when she has never been taught how to do it? In England her one instruction has usually been to throw a large handful of coarse soda into the water, with a view to making it soft and keeping the colour of the vegetables, whereas, in fact, she by so doing destroys their health-giving properties ; and every housekeeper should see that it is not done. Her next idea is to hand over the cooking of the vegetables to a raw girl of a kitchen-maid, if she has one.

I am most anxious that anybody who does not care for old Herbals should pass over those catalogued in March; but, on the other hand, that those who are interested in gardening should look through the November list of books, as they will find many modern ones mentioned there which may be useful to them for practical purposes.

My hope and wish is that my reader will take me by the hand; for I do not reap, and I do not sow. I am merely, like so many other women of the past and present, a patient gleaner in the fields of knowledge, and absolutely dependent on human sympathy in order to do anything at all. I cannot explain too much that the object of my book is to try to make everyone think for him or herself, and at the same time to profit by the instruction which in these days is so easy to get, and is all around us. Women are still behind the other sex in the power of thinking at all, much more so in the power of thinking of several things at once. I hope the coming women may see the great advantage of training their minds early in life to be a practical denial of Swift's cynical assertion that 'mankind are as unfit for flying as for thinking.' Nothing can be done well without thought-certainly not gardening, nor housekeeping, nor managing children. A curious example of this is given in a recently published account of the most famous of modern jugglers. He says that he trained his brain in youth to exert itself in three different ways at the same time. This no doubt is the reason that he is now pre-eminent in his own line.