I enclose an extract from a private letter from Boston, which may interest you. It is written by a flower lover. Is there not a hint for exhibitors therein ?

"I wish I could describe to you, so you could realize how charming the flowers (Chrysanthemums) are, the newspaper reports are so cold and meagre. I'm so old fashioned, that I like best the bonny little pompons. The sprawly Japanese varieties, I do not love one bit - not to have and to hold and pet. The Chinese are better, some are almost perfectly round, like a "Dalia" - as the Maine people say; and one pink one with a little pink perfume quite won me.

"But the orchids were a revelation to me - I never saw such beauties, and do not generally care much for them. They seem to be uncanny things - like transformed fairy butterflies or moths. One was evidently a tiger, which had been changed to a moth, and then to a flower; but it had rather a tiger uncertainty about it still, and I was a little suspicious of it.

"And my heart ached for some lovely pansies near the orchids. Can you imagine any human being capable of putting about thirty pansy blooms into a tall, narrow vase ! all squeezed together, so that not one could show its little face happily. They did look so sorry and uncomfortable that I made a desperate venture and begged of some one in charge a flat dish of water, and put them to float in it, and then the little faces smiled their thanks".