November is the month of months for the Chrysanthemum lover. It brings the crown of his year's work in the form of a lovely display of flowers in his conservatory, it brings the exhibitions, it brings the interest of studying the season's debutantes, and it brings that comparison of results and interchange of views with other growers which is so pleasant and helpful. The Golden Flower is at its best, and its best is something that robs November of all its accepted terrors - wet, fog, frost, and murk. The veriest misanthrope loses his gloom when he sees a collection of Chrysanthemums. The warming, inspiring influences of the flower flow all over him, and show him that there is still something left in life. The dyspeptic no longer groans because he is forbidden to take lobster salad at midnight; he is content to do without it, for he sees that there is something better.

Chrysanthemum time is a period of warmth, glow, and cheerfulness. Mark Tapley would have have had a bad time in these Chrysanthemum days, because his best efforts to avoid being jolly would have been unavailing, and he would have been blithe and hilarious in spite of himself.

November is more than a mere Chrysanthemum month, however. It is the great planting month of the year. It is that happy month when we spend joyous evenings over Rose, fruit, tree, shrub, and bulb catalogues - when we make out orders and alter them, and send them off and cancel them, and recollect a week after we posted them (a week in which we have got very angry with the florist because he has not acknowledged them) that we forgot to put our name and address on; a month when we worry all our friends, and the nurserymen, and the editors of gardening papers, and the secretaries of horticultural societies, for opinions about varieties. It is the month when we plan shrubberies, and Rose gardens, and tennis lawns, and all kinds of fresh features. Our gardening enthusiasm of the past year is still strong upon us, and we know that now or never is the time to act.

Truly in these days, when all people are gardeners, November has become a changed month. Once the month which people dreaded most as the sum of all that was gloomy, dispiriting, and oppressive, it has become a month that is looked forward to eagerly.