Skip to main content  The Signature of All Things   The
Signature of All Things  Alma Whittaker is born on the first
year of a new century, January 5, 1800, but her story begins
before her conception. Her father, Henry Whittaker, survived a
poverty-stricken childhood near London, where he lived in a hut
with an earthen floor and was not always fed. However, his
upbringing gave him something that would someday make him
incredibly wealthy: an understanding and a gift for
horticulture. Henry's father tended the orchards at Kew Gardens
and bequeathed to his youngest son a love for trees. Henry was
also intelligent enough to know that he could only raise his
stature through knowledge, so he learned everything he could
about the one avenue of scholarship available to him. He became
a tree wizard. Yet he watched the wealthy with avidly envious
eyes and yearned to become rich.  "THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS
is a magnificent literary triumph that surely will be long
heralded as an enduring classic. But more than that,