An English writer, with some novel ideas of how the smoke-laden
atmosphere of London might be purified, writes:
At one time I thought of proposing the establishment of
horticultural home-missions for promoting the dissemination of
flowerpot shrubs in the metropolis, and of showing how much the
atmosphere of London would be improved if every London family
had one little sweetbrier-bush, a lavender-plant, or a hardy
heliotrope to each of its members; so that a couple of millions
of such ozone generators should breathe their sweetness into the
dank and dead atmosphere of the denser central regions of London.
A little practical experience of the difficulty of growing a
clean cabbage, or maintaining alive any sort of shrub in the
midst of our soot-drizzle, satisfied me that the mission would
fail, even tho the sweetbriers were given away by the district
visitors; for these simple hardy plants perish in a mid-London
atmosphere unless their leaves are periodically sponged and
syringed, to wash away the soot particles that otherwise close
their stomata and suffocate the plant.
The ingenious scheme would fail because the plants themselves would
become foul and need to be cleansed. Failing this, they would die. So
in life character is easily incrusted with the spirit of worldliness.
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