A Great Flower Garden

1 y f í V Kj U II u VT 11V Vuil j aiav s w ■ A Oreat Flower Garden. You havo heard of old bachelors' whiuis. There aro lots of them on record, but Henry Shaw, of St, Louis, has given practical exocution to the most remarkable bachelor's crotchet of the age. He is a Scotchman, a milliouaire, and some 75 years old. He has constructed tho finest flower garden in the world. It has 350 acres in it, and is a gorgeous marvel of a garden. It has all tho ilowers in it obtainable in the world.Jthat will live in St. Louis climate. It is a bewildering paradise of floral beauty. The flowers nurnber by the millions. lts cost no one can tell. Shaw himself don't know. It is threaded by walks, and adorned with conservatories and hot-houses full of the rarost oxolics. A forcé of 100 gardenera is needed to keep the place in order. Shaw, it is said, spends his entire income from his millions in keeping it up. He began the thing after tho war, and for several yoars he has opened it to the public. Hundreds of thousands of visitors resort to it. It is the chief attraction and curiosity for the stranger in St. Louis to visit. And, strange to say, no pólice guard it, and no flowers are pilfered. This is the public reverence to the man's generous enterprise. We visited the elegant house at the hoad of the garden, where an elegant picture represents him standing among his flowers. Two elegant portraits of beautiful ladies in tho garb of a past day, represent some of his lómalo progenitors. A huge book is kept there for visitors to record their names in. A curious feature of the garden is beds devoted to one flower. For instance, thero is a large bed with every variety of cactus ; another with hundreds of verbenas, and so on. Evorything is in a prodigal profusión. It is a curious notion this, that prompts a rich man to devote a great income to one pet caprice, and that principally for the benefit of others. But in this very caprice, so unusual and so expensive, is wrapped up his own aspiration. He thus makes his celebrity. And why should not a man strive to become known though his mammoth gardens, as well as through his statesmanship or achievments of arms or genius V Shaw is near his gravo. He has in pursuance of his ambition, willed his gardens to the city, on condition that the city binds itself to keep them up. The city eagerly accepted the bequest, and thus, through privato liberality, gets, without cost, a public garden not surpassed in the world for magnificence and beauty. The gaidon will forever be dubbed " Shaw's Garden," and he thus travels on to immortality on tho sucoessful realization of his stupendous and most beautiful