HEARTICULTURE

for

This Year and Next

Compiled for D. Cupid by John Cecil Clay and Oliver Herford

Published by HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston and New York COPYRIGHT 1908 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published September 1908 THIRD IMPRESSION

THE PROPOSAL PLANT

Heartis Throbolæ

Loveyoulia Family.

This must not be confused with the Wild Popper weed, Paterfamilias Furiosis, which if not kept in its bed, often chokes off the Proposal Plant and prevents its blooming.

TO LOVERS AND LOVERS OF LOVERS

WEATHER: SPRING TIDES: PLANETS' MOTIONS: SUN AND MOON'S RISING AND SETTING: LENGTH OF DAYS: TIME OF HIGH WATER: FAIRS: COURTS AND HOLIDAYS.

Tides

In most of the coastwise states the tides will keep coming in as usual, but the wonderful changes in the flow of the Gulp stream will have a canny effect on some of the interior states.

Rains

This will be a dry year.

Length of Days

The days will be longer this year for those not in love than they will be for us.

The Golden Number

The Golden Number this year is only 2.

Fairs

The Fairs will be just as fair this year as last—if anything, a little fairer.

Courts

The Spring Courts will be continued on into the summer, maybe longer. As heretofore, cases having been appealed and receiving a satisfactory decision from the Supreme Court should also receive the sanction of the church.

Cupid's Legal Holidays Cupid's Birthday, January 1: St. Valentine's: The First Day of Spring: Midsummer Day: Proposal Day, September 17: Followed by Mourner's Morn (a half-hearted holiday) for the other fellow, September 18: Hallowe'en. Every Student of Hearticulture is allowed three Legal Holidays to be their very own. 1———————————————— 2———————————————— 3————————————————

Artists' Note

To the lovers of Beauty no branch of science offers such varied delights as that of Hearticulture; at the same time no pursuit is so full of disappointments for the inexperienced and pitfalls for the unwary. It is the study of a lifetime; no one can say he is a master of Hearticulture. Many of the most successful gardeners give it up as they become older: some from disappointment over a trifling failure, others from sheer weariness; still more take up a branch of nursery-gardening called Matrimony, which demands such close attention and care that it has come to be regarded as a profession in itself.

It has even been asserted that Matrimony is no branch of Hearticulture at all—a statement so far from the truth that it can only come from a disappointed or unsuccessful Heart Gardener. Be warned, dear reader; if you should take up this highest and most beautiful of all the branches of Hearticulture with such an erroneous idea, you are foredoomed to failure.

If this little book be the means of showing to even the least of these the error of his ways, we shall not feel that it has been made in vain.

ENGAGEMENTS

Master Cupid he made a plan For a garden of Hearts on the first of JAN

January

One cannot begin too early, and January is the time for looking over the ground and planning the arrangement of the Heart Garden.

Outside of the Hothouse few flowers are to be seen in January. The most noticeable of these is the Common Turnleaf or Resolution Plant, a sort of Neverlasting Flower. The Turnleaf abounds during the early days of January, but disappears as the month progresses.

It is a showy plant, with its curiously marked leaves, but is seldom known to blossom. The Flower, which is said to be of the purest white, with an odor somewhat resembling Sanctity, is entirely concealed by the leaves, which begin to turn as soon as the plant is full-grown.

When the new leaves have completely turned over, the flower will be seen in all its snowy beauty. This, however, rarely happens, as most of the plants die long before the turning process is accomplished.

Another winter-blooming flower is the Valentine Plant (Lovelornia Desperatia), one of the Epistolaria Family. This should be set out towards the end of the month, as it flowers in the middle of February.

NOTE. Recent investigations have shown that this destructive Blight, of which the Turnleaf is the victim, is caused by a deadly germ known as Jus Twunsmoria.

THE PUFF BLOSSOM

Powderminosia Delicatea

Frivolia Family.

Shy. Blooms in out-of-the-way corners and on dressing-tables.

THE CHECK WEED

An uncertain plant. Don't try to raise them unless you have had experience.

He stole some cord from the spider's web To make a fence on the first of FEB