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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is not fair to judge a man by looking out his faults. The fair way is this: Could you have done as well as he did starting where he started and with the same facilities or lacks that he had. Any man can leap further by jumping from another man's shoulders, adds Sprague, as he and I talk, today at tea. It seems to me, too, that a man should be judged by his really constructive results and not by what he failed to do. - Today, Aug. 25, I met Mr. H.N. Ridley in the Botanic Garden and he invited me to luncheon at his house. He lives in Cumberland Road very near E.G. Baker. In his dining room I was struck by the old portraits on the wall. I merely glanced at them but
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Aug. 24, 1930 he noticed it and at once said they were family portraits, adding that he could not get the originals and had secured copies. Though he did not say so, it was surely to be inferred that he belongs to the Penn family. Amongst the lot was a well known engraving of William Penn negotiating with the Indians in Pennsylvania. Ridley knew Geo. [George] Bentham personally. Bentham was, he said a very serious person, seldom smiled or laughed - having a somber personality, quite in contrast to Sir Jos. [Joseph] Hooker who was lively and genial. - In flower the Oenothera species look more alike, that is living, than when dried, I suppose. It usually happens that where one has fresh flowers that the species of a genus look different, to be sure; but show a general resemblance generically.
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