Publisher's Synopsis
You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten and forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience-and you may find in the end it is yours also-the people I have cared for most and who have seemed most worth caring for-my December roses-have been very simple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone of importance, so as to do you credit.