m:M/S^' C* V A - k W ^""* C^ 
 
 OSAICS 
 
 ''-%! &3W 
 
 ALFRED'SIMSONI^ 
 

 GIFT OF 
 A. P. Morrison 
 
 
 
B 
 
 
GfotDen 
 
The Old House and Garden. 
 
$ptogopl)ical, amoral, and 
 Horticultural 
 
 ' Ye bright mosaics that with storied beauty 
 The floors of Nature '6 temple tessellate . "... 
 Horace Smith. 
 
Copyright, 1903, by 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Published 
 
 .; .: : ; . 
 
 #&.: ? > i . 
 
PREFACE 
 
 S I have no literary ability or prac- 
 tise, and know very little about 
 gardening, I suppose I ought to 
 apologize for presenting this crude 
 production to an intelligent public. At all events, 
 I should like to put forth my thoughts and 
 reflections with a demeanor of becoming mod- 
 esty. 
 
 I have never been in the habit of expressing 
 my intimate thoughts and feelings, or of laying 
 bare my soul, and if I did, it would not be fit for 
 the public to gaze upon. But occasionally, like 
 others, I express certain desultory opinions. I 
 am sometimes honest and more often try to be, 
 as far as the exigencies of circumstances allow. 
 On this occasion, at any rate, I have no interest 
 or wish to sail under false colors, and were I to 
 do so some of my readers would be sure to find 
 me out. 
 
 I have no confidant but " Nature, the deep- 
 v 
 
 JVJ95627 
 
bosomed," and none but she, therefore, will be 
 able to discern in what I say more than the one 
 or two slight phases of my character which are 
 exhibited. But there are many others, mostly 
 worse. 
 
 This little book is not a spontaneous produc- 
 tion, but is the result of labor and tribulation, 
 both physical and mental. Some of the views 
 I have expressed are unorthodox, and I am also 
 aware of the fact that they are not original, but 
 are mostly borrowed from or suggested by the 
 thoughts of others. 
 
 Having thus introduced the author, I must say 
 a word about the garden. By most competent 
 judges it would be pronounced a very ordinary, 
 little, somewhat ill-kept garden. It has the ad- 
 vantage, however, of being old and of contain- 
 ing a few nice old trees and shrubs, while in form 
 and subdivision it is pleasantly irregular. If I 
 have created the impression that it is a greater 
 and grander domain than it really is, I merely 
 wish to state that such has not been my in- 
 tention. 
 
 December, 1902. 
 
 v 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Beauties of My Garden 3 
 
 II. Thoughts That Come 13 
 
 III. Women and Gardens 23 
 
 IV. Religion 33 
 
 V. Garden Temptations 45 
 
 VI. Garden Pets, and Others . . . .55 
 
 VII. Tropical Trees 67 
 
 VIII. The Child and the Garden .... 77 
 
 IX. Training the Garden 89 
 
 X. The Coming of Spring xoi 
 
 XI. Blossoms in 
 
 XII. Suggestions 123 
 
 XIII. Birds and Philosophy 135 
 
 XIV. Roses and Philology 147 
 
 XV. Midsummer Roses 157 
 
 XVI. Gardens and Life 167 
 
 XVII. Some Old-time Favorites . . . .177 
 
 XVIII. Autumnal Forecast 189 
 
 XIX. Falling Leaves 199 
 
 XX. The Garden in Winter 209 
 
 Vll 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing 
 page 
 
 The Old House and Garden . . . Frontispiece 
 Under One of these Trees Sat the Buddha . . 15 
 This Porch was of Great Beauty . . . .56 
 The Most Beautiful Tree I Have Ever Seen . . 70 
 Her Beloved White Pigeons Settled About Her . 81 
 
 It Served as a Cradle for so many Attractive 
 Objects i6z 
 
 IX 
 
Day stars ! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle 
 
 From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation 
 
 And dewdrops on her lonely altars sprinkle as a libation. 
 
CHAPTER ; i V> V 
 
 BEAUTIES OF -MY i " 
 
 HE stars were still shining when I 
 went out of the door, as they gen- 
 erally are when I emerge from the 
 house into the garden on clear 
 mornings in winter. 
 
 All was still in the fresh, crisp air, but the 
 sparrows seemed to resent the intrusion of an 
 early riser and fluttered noisily out of the ivy 
 and yews as I passed close to their roosting 
 place. 
 
 The ivy on the back of the house, like all else 
 about that edifice, had such a hirsute and ragged 
 appearance that it had to be cut to the bone a 
 year ago, and it has not yet recovered from its 
 close shearing and from a subsequent interfer- 
 ence of bricklayers and repairers. The sparrows 
 found their cover so attenuated that they took 
 to the yews for a time; but with the gradual 
 
 3 
 
recovery of growth in the ivy, they are begin- 
 ning to return to their old home. 
 
 I lovcQ md encourage all birds except sparrows, 
 who haivb-'to tie: Suppressed so that they may 
 np't esf abl jsh,- tfre r hionopcly they hold in so many 
 places 'where 'they settle, to the exclusion of more 
 attractive species. The garden abounds with 
 thrushes, blackbirds, starlings, robins, linnets, 
 chaffinches, bullfinches, tits, and wrens, and in 
 the proper season the air is vibrant with the 
 song of nightingales and the soft amorous coo- 
 ing of doves. In winter the blackbirds and 
 thrushes are the most sociable, and the blue tits 
 revel in a beech close to the southeast corner 
 of the house, its branches being hung like a 
 Christmas-tree with tallow candles and half 
 coconuts * for their special delectation. The 
 robins, of course, become very tame and friendly 
 from the interested motives which, alas! only 
 too often lie at the root of friendly advances. I 
 do not, like some, however, apostrophize these 
 dainty little feathered friends as " sneaks " be- 
 
 * I spell this word without an "a" as it has nothing to do with 
 Theobroma cacao." 
 
Beauties of 
 
 cause they approach me more frequently and 
 nearer when they are hungry and want food. It 
 is human nature, and evidently bird nature too. 
 
 What a lot of human nature there is in man! 
 By which I mean man in his generic symboliza- 
 tion, " embracing woman," and how often is the 
 fact ignored. It (human nature) explains and ac- 
 counts for much that is misunderstood, and legis- 
 lators, political, social, and domestic, should al- 
 ways keep it uppermost in their minds, as they 
 themselves also do not fail to demonstrate its in- 
 fluence. Man is human, and above all a human 
 animal, not rational, as we like to describe him, 
 but " rationis capax " ; that is to say, capable of 
 acting on reason in favorable circumstances. His 
 sentiment is at best but partially controlled and 
 modified by reason, and where sentiment is 
 strong, reason is swept away and the faculty of its 
 exercise temporarily ceases to exist. 
 
 The robins, moreover, in spite of this inter- 
 polation on man, gave substantial evidence of 
 disinterested sociability by building their nests 
 in summer, when they asked and expected noth- 
 ing, close to the house where I almost brushed 
 
 5 
 
jftogaicg 
 
 against them many times a day. One little nest 
 was so low in the short brushwood on the stem 
 of an old yew that even Timmy, the rough-haired 
 terrier, sometimes peeped in to see if the baby 
 robins were agreeing in their little nest. For 
 birds in their little nests do not always agree 
 proverbs notwithstanding. 
 
 No one can be really said to love his gar- 
 den who does not love it in winter. A fine- 
 weather love is like a fine-weather friend, the 
 prostitution of a sacred name: the friend is no 
 friend and the love is no love at all. 
 
 Winter in a garden is the season of promise, 
 of hope, and of anxious expectation, and who 
 can say that the objects of our hopes and anxi- 
 eties are not as interesting and engaging to our 
 faculties as their fulfilment; that is to say, when 
 they cease any longer to be hopes and anxieties. 
 Realization of hopes may give, and sometimes 
 does give, serener pleasure, but it seldom pre- 
 occupies the intellect so completely or so long 
 as the hopes themselves. And then there are 
 the failures, or realizations of the anxieties, to 
 take into the account. 
 
 6 
 
of H (0attien 
 
 It is a long time to wait through all the win- 
 ter months to realize the hopes and anxieties 
 which have been planted in the soil in the au- 
 tumn. If one's solicitude is equal in volume upon 
 each separate object within its purview, as I 
 suppose it must more or less be, to what dimen- 
 sions must not the aggregate attain when the 
 units are impartially dealt out in thousands? 
 
 In the beds under the windows on the south 
 and west of the house hundreds of tulips and 
 hyacinths have been inserted. The tulips are 
 all mixed, as they look much brighter and gayer 
 than when sorted in colors. In the herbaceous 
 borders, most of them backed or centered by 
 shrubs, chiefly evergreen, are irises, Spanish, 
 German, English, Japanese, and reticulata, anem- 
 ones of various descriptions, daffodils, narcissi, 
 ixias, foxgloves, lilies, campanulas, montbretias, 
 ranunculi, delphiniums, and many other plants 
 and bulbs. The borders round the lawns are 
 all lined with mixed crocuses, and quantities of 
 these, with snowflakes, daffodils, snowdrops, and 
 scillas, have been put in the grass wherever 
 there are untrodden corners, and around trees. 
 
 7 
 
In the paddock I have planted quantities of the 
 same bulbs in the grass together with grape hya- 
 cinths, fritillarias, chionodoxas, dog's-tooth vio- 
 lets, and other things, all pell-mell; and under 
 a long line of hedge, anemones have been in- 
 serted between the stems of the hawthorn. An- 
 other and very ragged hedge on one side of the 
 paddock has been " mended " with sweetbriers, 
 crimson ramblers, and honeysuckle. Some cop- 
 per beech, crab-apple, mountain ash, double pink 
 cherry, with rhododendrons and other shrubs, 
 have been filled into gaps in the shrubberies. 
 The garden is an old one, and has been much 
 neglected for years past. 
 
 I have also planted out a lot of roses, and am 
 determined to make Marechal Niel flourish in 
 the open. I am the more emboldened to this 
 as when I took possession of the house, the pre- 
 vious tenant, who had allowed a beautiful old 
 garden to run to seed and weed in every part 
 of it, had planted a rose of this variety in mis- 
 erable soil against the wall of a coach-house in 
 the back-yard, facing another building, where 
 it got next to no sun and was exposed to the 
 
 8 
 
iseauttesi of jft? 
 
 coldest north winds of winter, funneled through 
 the space it occupied. It had been there for 
 some years and lived! 
 
 I have planted one by a small porch on the 
 south side of the house, where it should do well, 
 and another in an exposed position on a higher 
 elevation. I have sought to temper the winter 
 wind by means of a piece of matting. 
 
 The "gentle reader" may thus gather that 
 the aggregate of my hopes and anxieties is prob- 
 ably greater and will be of longer duration than 
 the pleasure of realization of the former minus 
 the failures. 
 
 It occurs to me that this chapter had " Day- 
 Stars " for its text, and I have said nothing about 
 them beyond a cursory allusion to the stars of 
 the firmament in the early morning in winter. 
 The most beautiful day-stars in the shape of 
 flowers I have ever seen may be found in Ipom&a 
 rubro-ccerulea, but it can only be seen in its glory 
 in the tropics. In one of the tropical gardens 
 I have had there was a trellis, some 120 to 150 
 feet long and 8 feet high, which for nearly two 
 months on end each year used to be covered in 
 
 9 
 
a dense mass with these magnificent and heav- 
 enly flowers. No leaves were visible, and every 
 morning a fresh relay of flowers opened to the 
 dawn, those of the previous day hiding behind 
 them and falling off with the reddish tint which 
 I suppose gave rise to the compound Latin name 
 of the species. 
 
 This is a true day-star, only the coloring is 
 exactly reversed from that of the night stars. 
 The golden light of day robbed from the latter 
 brings forth on the ipomoea countless constella- 
 tions of the purest, densest heavenly blue, the 
 exquisite beauty of which in a large mass must 
 be imagined, for at all events I have not words 
 wherewith to paint its glories. I can only say 
 it compelled the admiration of all who have ever 
 seen it, be their soul never so dead or dull to the 
 beauties of nature. 
 
 10 
 
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam 
 Im Norden anf kahler Hoh'. 
 Ihn schlafert ; mit weisser Decke 
 Umhiillen ihn Eis und Schnee. 
 
 Er traumt von einer Palme, 
 Die fern im Morgenland 
 Eisam und schweigend trauert 
 Anf brennender Felsenwand. 
 
 Heine. 
 
 A fir-tree stands there lonely 
 Where northern blizzards blow. 
 
 He slumbers: a silver mantle 
 Enshrouds him in ice and snow. 
 
 His dreams are of a palm-tree 
 
 Who far in torrid zone 
 In silence droops and sorrows 
 
 On sweltering crag alone. 
 
 II 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THOUGHTS THAT COME 
 
 OMETIMES I think the garden is 
 even more beautiful in its winter 
 garb than in its gala dress of sum- 
 mer. I know I have thought so 
 more than once when every leaf and branch was 
 clothed with a pure garment of snow, so light as 
 not to hide the grace of form. But nothing, it 
 seems to me, could ever transcend the exquisite 
 beauty of the vegetation when on one occasion a 
 sharp frost followed a very wet fog. The mist 
 driven by the wind had imparted a coating of 
 fresh moisture, evenly distributed, over and under 
 every leaf and twig inside the trees and shrubs 
 as well as outside. The light coating then froze 
 and left every innermost twig resplendent with 
 delicate white crystals. It was quite different 
 from an ordinary frost or a fall of snow, beau- 
 tiful as are frequently the effects of these. But 
 13 
 
the glory of the scene reached its climax when 
 the sun came out and the thicket scintillated 
 from the center as well as from its external sur- 
 face. 
 
 Its dazzling splendor, however, could not last, 
 and the glistening and enchanted spectacle grad- 
 ually melted away before the greater and more 
 glorious life-giving presence of " God's lidless 
 Eye." This gorgeous scene, however, has always 
 dwelt in my memory, and figures as the most 
 glowing aspect a garden can assume at any sea- 
 son of the year. 
 
 But, even without such adventitious aids as 
 snow or frost, the garden is engaging in its 
 winter attire. Beauty unadorned is adorned the 
 most ; but then it must be beauty. I do not wish 
 to go to extremes and worship the bare straight 
 wands of a scraggy unclothed bush whose naked- 
 ness is only tolerable because of the alluring 
 toilettes it dons at other seasons. What, how- 
 ever, can be more fascinating than many a nude 
 tree, the sturdy strength of the anatomy of the 
 oak and the lithe grace of the beech and the 
 birch? I have in my mind's eye two other splen- 
 
 14 
 

 Under One of these Trees Sat the Buddha. 
 
Come 
 
 did examples, and there are many more. One is 
 a magnificent elm in the corner of the lawn, 
 whose symmetry and grace of structure I never 
 cease to admire when it is leafless, with the 
 massive strength of its stem and primary 
 branches and the delicate and feathery tracery 
 in the arrangement of its countless little twigs 
 spread out against the sky. Another beautiful 
 leafless tree in its vast expansion toward the 
 light is the peepul-tree of India, the Ficus religi- 
 osa. I am fortunately able to reproduce a photo- 
 graph of one of these beautiful trees taken some 
 years ago by a friend, whose enlargement of it 
 made a most attractive picture. It was under 
 one of these trees that nearly 2,500 years ago is 
 said to have sat, wrestling with the demons of 
 temptation, Gautama, the Buddha, the man whose 
 teaching and beneficent influence has swayed a 
 larger number of the human race than any one 
 either before or after him. Even to this day his 
 followers probably represent a greater propor- 
 tion of the population of the earth than any other 
 religion, and, including the followers of Brahman- 
 ism, whose religion owes some of its best phases 
 
 15 
 
to the same source, the influence of his example 
 and discipline may be said to sway more than 
 half the entire population of the globe. 
 
 It always seems to me that the only reason 
 why the wisdom of Gautama has not been ac- 
 cepted and practised more widely and more 
 strictly is simply that his philosophy is too high 
 for poor weak human nature, I will not say to 
 grasp, but to hold permanently. We can all 
 grasp the truth that desire can not be controlled 
 and quenched by its satisfaction, but only by its 
 limitation; but who can hold to this truth and 
 go on practising fresh limitations continually till 
 the Nirvana of perfect peace, the cessation of 
 desire, is attained? 
 
 Great trees which rise and spread their shape- 
 ly arms toward the sky, whether in leaf and 
 blossom or unclothed, always recall to my mem- 
 ory the beautiful poem of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes, Under the Violets : 
 
 At last the little rootlets of the trees 
 Shall find the prison where she lies, 
 
 And bear the buried dust they seize 
 In leaves and blossoms to the skies. 
 So may the soul that warmed it rise! 
 
 16 
 
Come 
 
 How much better to have one's body clasped 
 by the tender little rootlets and one's soul raised 
 aloft, its essence fragrantly diffused toward 
 heaven, than to be put into a cold vault in a 
 leaden box, or cremated! 
 
 Then, think in winter of all the bulbs and roots 
 sleeping in their wholesome and fresh earthen 
 bed. One sees how comfortable they are when 
 one happens, as occurs now and then inadvert- 
 ently, to disturb them in their slumber. How 
 cozy and healthy the little bulbs look with their 
 fresh pale green shoots emerging from their shell 
 ready to break through the soil toward the 
 light, to expand their treasured beauties in the 
 open air when the cold of winter has passed 
 away. 
 
 We are in the middle of December, and as the 
 weather is cold the roses have had their winter 
 capes thrown over their shoulders. I have plant- 
 ed a number of new ones, and these, like many 
 others which are in positions exposed to the 
 northeast wind, will no doubt be more comforta- 
 ble and respond to the care that is taken of them 
 better if the cold blast is partially warded from 
 2 17 
 
them. The cape consists of a flat bunch of yew 
 tied over the neck of the plant. 
 
 The sweet peas, too, which were sown in Oc- 
 tober and are shooting above ground, have now 
 also been protected. Last year the October sow- 
 ing answered very well with the result that my 
 first crop of these fragrant and beautiful flowers 
 came very early. 
 
 How many things have failed, though? It is 
 true we learn through our mistakes; but how 
 tediously and how slowly! It usually takes us 
 a lifetime to know that we have sipped but a 
 teaspoonful from the inexhaustible ocean of 
 knowledge and that we have not even digested 
 that small dose properly. 
 
 To give a homely personal instance, my head, 
 like that, I am given to understand, of most 
 married men, is of an irregular configuration, and 
 hats shaped for it invariably relapse, a short time 
 after their purchase, into the usual oval (by 
 which I mean egg-shaped) ellipse and compress 
 my more highly developed bumps, which I must 
 assume a phrenological investigation would show 
 to be good ones. It took me over thirty years 
 
 18 
 
Come 
 
 to hit upon the plan of having a wooden form 
 constructed to match the plane of the orbit of 
 that portion of my skull which is designed by 
 nature, besides growing hair, for carrying a hat 
 rim. Both these objects it had previously not 
 fulfilled to my satisfaction. Now I transfer the 
 pressure, discomfort, and headaches to the block 
 of wood, and when this has extracted them com- 
 pletely from the hat, I wear it. 
 
 Could anything be more simple, and why 
 should I have taken thirty years to find it 
 out. 
 
 My cranial protuberances of benevolence, sen- 
 sibility, amiability, etc., as I presume them to 
 be in the absence of expert phrenological opinion 
 to the contrary, are thus no longer constricted 
 as they were before, and can expand more 
 freely. 
 
 I never knew the cause of some of my phys- 
 ical discomforts and moral deficiencies till I made 
 this discovery, which must be sound and not 
 mere theory, as it is evidenced by the practical 
 proof that I feel less evilly disposed toward 
 my neighbor when I have a comfortable hat on 
 
 19 
 
than with one which does not allow my bumps 
 full play. 
 
 I offer my readers this recipe gratis for their 
 boots where it may be of similar soothing 
 service. 
 
 20 
 
Steht ein Baum im schonen Garten 
 Und ein Apfel hangt daran 
 Und es ringelt sich am Aste 
 Eine Schlange, und ich kann 
 Von den siissen Schlangenaugen 
 Nimmer wenden meinen Blick, 
 Und Das zischelt so verheissend, 
 Und Das lockt wie holdes Gluck ! 
 
 Heine. 
 
 A tree stands in a beauteous garden 
 
 And an apple hangs thereon, 
 And there resting in the branches 
 
 Twines a serpent, and upon 
 Those sweet magic serpent glances 
 
 Must I rivet fast my gaze : 
 Something whispers so entrancing, 
 
 Lures me in a blissful haze. 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER III 
 WOMEN AND GARDENS 
 
 HARLES DUDLEY WARNER, in 
 his charming little book, My Sum- 
 mer in a Garden, which I always, 
 rightly or wrongly, look upon as the 
 pioneer among the more recent light garden lit- 
 erature, perhaps because it was the first book of 
 its kind I read, now a good many years ago, says : 
 " Woman always made a muss in a garden." It 
 is quite clear he can not have read Elizabeth, 
 Miss Jekyll, or Mrs. Earle, or he could never 
 have made such a statement without naming his 
 exceptions. I am sure no one can say those 
 ladies made a " muss," whatever that may be, 
 in a garden. 
 
 I suppose Mr. Warner refers to our mother 
 
 Eve, who undoubtedly flirted with the serpent, 
 
 while he was probably handsome and walking 
 
 erect before his curse; but after all, Eve's con- 
 
 23 
 
duct seems to me quite natural, as the serpent 
 was the first who spoke to her, and possibly even 
 whispered in her ear! He seems to have ap- 
 peared on the scene before Ithuriel and Zephon, 
 who might otherwise have been preferred with 
 vastly different consequences to the human race. 
 Eve's curiosity, a quality which woman was 
 formerly supposed to possess in a strong de- 
 gree, was no doubt aroused, and she wanted to 
 know what a chat with an erect serpent would 
 be like. He proved, it seems clear, an adept, 
 since he opened the conversation, not like the 
 clever Scotchman with a repartee, but on the 
 subject of the forbidden. This is always a dan- 
 gerous subject, and for that reason an attractive 
 one. Eve fell into temptation, and for my own 
 part I have not yet been able to discern what 
 temptation was made for unless it was to be 
 fallen into. I am aware the view exists that 
 it is placed in our way in order to test and 
 strengthen our character. As a test of character, 
 however, it seems to me to fail. To avoid temp- 
 tation and give it the go-by is pure evidence of 
 weakness and nothing else, and the practise of 
 24 
 
anti 
 
 ineptitude can not possibly be fortifying. Our 
 mental and physical faculties were made for use, 
 and, the great scheme of evolution shows us, for 
 development also not for abuse, though, be it 
 clearly understood. But to discuss in this chap- 
 ter the immense advantage to be gained by the 
 exercise of moderation would lead me too far 
 away. I may come back to it later on if some- 
 thing else in the course of these scattered 
 thoughts suggests the subject to me again. 
 
 What I have never understood is why we are 
 always taught that Adam and Eve were turned 
 out of the Garden of Eden because they ate of 
 the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil, and were thus guilty of disobedience.. I 
 find every one I have questioned has been so 
 taught, and that there has been nothing unusual 
 in my instruction; but in vain have I sought 
 a satisfactory reply to my demand for authority. 
 The ground was cursed, and our disobedient 
 first parents were cursed for having eaten of the 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; 
 but that was not the direct ground of their ban- 
 ishment from the garden, the reason very clearly 
 25 
 
and explicitly stated in the third chapter of 
 Genesis being quite a different one. 
 
 The society Eve of the present day, I take it, 
 does not make a " muss " in the garden, what- 
 ever she may do elsewhere. But I wish I knew 
 what a " muss " is, so that I might find out where 
 she does make it and ascertain what it is like. 
 Perhaps, after all, it is a good thing to do, and 
 is virtuous and commendable, and for aught I 
 know, Mr. Warner may have been paying wom- 
 anhood a compliment in saying they "made a 
 muss." When he observed that "nature was 
 awful smart," he said he meant to be compli- 
 mentary; so, perhaps, his intentions were similar 
 in this case. But, however that may be, I think 
 it will be safer for me at once to repudiate all 
 responsibility for possibly misinterpreting a word 
 I do not understand or know the meaning of. * 
 
 All the same, I have arrived at the conclusion 
 that the woman who does not " make a muss in 
 a garden " is a product of quite recent times. 
 
 One Society Eve I know looks upon the devel- 
 opment for the table of two fat mushrooms under 
 an ash-tree as of much more absorbing interest 
 26 
 
and 
 
 than the blooming of Senateur Vaisse, L'ldeal 
 or Marie van Houtte ; and another, when once on 
 an occasion I pointed out admiringly some pans 
 tessellated with a gorgeous variety of gay portu- 
 lacas, told me she considered them " footly little 
 things," an adjective I must presume to be com- 
 mendatory, as I have not succeeded in discover- 
 ing in the authorities any contrary signification 
 to it. 
 
 Among the various Clematis I have planted is 
 one called the " Duchess of Albany." It is one of 
 the hybrids of Coccvnea, the wild Mexican species. 
 Its growth on the west side of the house has been 
 all that could be desired, for in half the time it has 
 entirely outstripped a vigorous plant of Jackmanni 
 which climbs alongside it. It flowered fairly pro- 
 fusely and continued in blossom till well on in the 
 autumn, but its blooms took more after its parent 
 Coccinea than Jackmanni, being an erect half -closed 
 bell, something in the shape of a campanula, of a 
 striated, rather insipid, pink color. I was look- 
 ing forward with the most pleasurable anticipa- 
 tion and excitement to the efflorescence of my 
 pink Clematis; but now I wonder when I think 
 
 27 
 
of it as compared with the beautiful large Jack- 
 manni varieties, rich in color, and bold in design, 
 whether I should be sufficiently complimentary 
 if I apostrophized it " a footly little thing." 
 
 In this chapter I seem to have been talking 
 almost more about woman than about the gar- 
 den ; but after all woman is indissolubly mixed up 
 with the garden, which she usually directs as she 
 does most other things, and in the end we must 
 acknowledge that she is either the rose or the vior 
 let of society if not of the garden. A great and 
 clever man once summed up to me in two words 
 the culmination of his experience as to the treat- 
 ment of woman : " Thwart her," he said. The 
 prescription may or may not be a good and cha- 
 stening one. It would in any case have to be 
 administered with great tact and much gilding. 
 I do not, however, wish to discuss it, as it is not 
 in my line, though I must plead guilty to think- 
 ing sometimes with another great man that 
 " woman is an unreasoning being who pokes the 
 fire from the top." 
 
 Metaphorically this is quite true, for the simple 
 reason that woman is swayed much more by senti- 
 
 28 
 
anD 
 
 ment than man is. Her sympathies preclude her 
 from a due sense of justice ; but she is not alone 
 in the common human weakness of sympathy 
 for the criminal, if he is only bad enough, instead 
 of for the victims he has wronged. 
 
 Let us, however, be thankful that she is as she 
 is, and try to make the best of ourselves and our 
 gardens. 
 
 It is foolish of me to have allowed myself to 
 make any remarks about so complicated a subject 
 as woman ; but what is said is said and I propose 
 in this chronicle to record whatever comes into 
 my head, as I write, on any subject. 
 
 29 
 
The truth-seeker is the only God-seeker. 
 
 "S. 1 
 
 Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes, 
 Or any searcher know by mortal mind, 
 Veil after veil will lift but there must be 
 Veil upon veil behind. 
 
 Edwin Arnold. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 RELIGION 
 
 LTHOUGH I love my garden in win- 
 ter as well as in summer, from the 
 fact that there is so much less day- 
 light at this season, I am, of course, 
 able to spend less time in it. The longer even- 
 ings indoors give more opportunity for reading 
 than does the summer, when one begrudges 
 every moment spent in the house. A short while 
 ago I found time to read The Soul of a People, 
 by Fielding, and I have now read his sequel to it, 
 entitled The Hearts of Men. 
 
 These two books are the most interesting ones 
 I have read for many a long day and I commend 
 their perusal to reflective persons; but I must 
 make some remarks on them. The latter book 
 opens with a number of definitions of religion 
 by different writers and toward the end the au- 
 thor gives three definitions of his own. Of the 
 others only one seems to me at all satisfactory. 
 3 33 
 
It is by Max Miiller, who says : " Religion is the 
 perception of the infinite," which is no doubt cor- 
 rect as far as it goes, only does it go far enough, 
 and is it complete enough for a full definition? 
 The subject is of such momentous importance 
 and of such intense interest to the entire human 
 race that I am sure a more or less comprehensive 
 definition is needed. I am not a voracious reader 
 of theology and may thus not be aware of many 
 excellent definitions which have been propound- 
 ed. What I say, therefore, is set down in all 
 deference. 
 
 Fielding's first definition is : " Religion is the 
 recognition and cultivation of our highest emo- 
 tions, of our more beautiful instincts, of all that 
 we know is best in us." Now this seems to me 
 quite wrong. Religion may involve all these 
 things ; but it can not be said that it is itself the 
 recognition and cultivation of what is best in us, 
 and what is best must always be to some extent 
 a matter of opinion and convention. Even the 
 first of my propositions can only apply to some 
 of us and to some religions. Our author express- 
 ly states that he deals with religion generally, 
 
 34 
 
Religion 
 
 true or false, and seeks a common ground for all, 
 a condition surely not met by his definition. It 
 would not be difficult, but perhaps is unnecessary 
 here, to quote examples or cases to prove this. 
 
 His second definition is : " Religion is the sat- 
 isfaction of some of the wants of the souls of 
 men." This is childish. You might as well de- 
 fine the practise of any virtue, art, any intellectual 
 enjoyment, the love of gain, or even food or drink, 
 in the same words. An effect is again mistaken 
 for a state of being, and a causa causans is classed 
 as its consequence. 
 
 The third definition runs : " Religion is the 
 music of the infinite echoed in the hearts of men." 
 This, of course, is metaphorical, and poetical if 
 you like. It is no doubt a good " imaginative 
 idealization," but not a clear definition which can 
 enable us better to understand with our reason- 
 ing faculties what religion really is. It is, how- 
 ever, the only one of the three definitions, albeit 
 vague and parabolical, which comes near the 
 truth. It would have been still nearer, it appears 
 to me, had it been expressed as : " The pulsations 
 of the human heart vibrating into infinity." 
 
 35 
 
The Hearts of Men opens with the follow- 
 ing quotation from Anon : " The difficulty of 
 framing a correct definition of religion is very 
 great. Such a definition should apply to nothing 
 but religion, and should differentiate religion 
 from anything else as, for example, from imagi- 
 native idealization, art, morality, philosophy. It 
 should apply to everything which is naturally 
 and commonly called religion; to religion as a 
 subjective spiritual state, and to all religions, high 
 or low, true or false, which have obtained ob- 
 jective historical realization." 
 
 Do Fielding's definitions comply with these re- 
 quirements, the soundness of which can not be 
 questioned ? I think not. His best definition, and 
 that of Max Muller also, must, I fear, be classed 
 as " imaginative idealizations." 
 
 Before going further I wish to postulate two 
 things : First, the imperfection of our senses, and, 
 secondly, that all religions, so-called true or false, 
 whether based on pure ascetic philosophy or on 
 the crudest superstition and ignorance, are vir- 
 tually an attempt to solve the connection of hu- 
 manity with the hereafter and the unknown. The 
 
 36 
 
unknowable future, after life is extinct, I think 
 it will be acknowledged is the essence of religion. 
 
 As regards our senses, which we must analyze 
 in order that we may see clearly what our means 
 of understanding a difficult problem are, we must 
 remember that they consist really of only one 
 sense, and that a very material one. It is the 
 sense of touch or contact, in progressive degrees 
 of refinement. 
 
 FirstTouch. 
 
 Second Taste, or the appreciation and distinc- 
 tion of finer particles. 
 
 Third Smell, or the appreciation of still finer 
 particles. 
 
 Fourth Hearing, or the appreciation of the 
 impact of sound-waves. 
 
 Fifth Sight, or the appreciation of the impact 
 of the much finer vibrations of light. 
 
 We have no other means or apparatus for re- 
 ceiving or collecting impressions, and this ap- 
 paratus consists of a series of instruments, name- 
 ly, " feelers," of a very imperfect nature, however 
 marvelous we may consider them to be. They 
 are connected with and constitute the scouts and 
 
 37 
 
sentinels of another wonderful instrument, the 
 brain, where every impression they convey is 
 stored for conscious or unconscious use. The 
 assimilation of all these impressions of material 
 facts results in the exercise of what we call the 
 reasoning faculty. This faculty may elaborate and 
 build up theories and abstract ideas ; but these all 
 emanate originally from the same source, material 
 contact of the sense of touch with material ob- 
 jects. In these circumstances can we wonder if 
 we fail to grasp such a subject as infinity, which 
 does not manifest itself either as matter or force 
 and which it is quite beyond the power of our 
 instruments to gage. Until our powers are 
 further developed and refined we must regard 
 such things as "behind the veil," and wait in 
 patience for further light and more extended 
 means of understanding. In the meantime, hu- 
 manity, whose first instinct is self-preservation, 
 fears extinction in a vague, untutored way. 
 There is, however, as far as we know, no reason 
 to apprehend extinction either of matter or force ; 
 but with regard to the individuality of living or- 
 ganisms, simple or complex, the case is different. 
 
 38 
 
Eeligton 
 
 There is no evidence to give us any ground to suppose 
 that complex individuality is anything but an epheme- 
 ral condition. Throughout the great scheme of 
 evolution we see of what small importance is the 
 individual. He is nothing, and may be, and is, 
 continually sacrificed in the interest of the prog- 
 ress of the community. Individual to race, race 
 to species, species to genus, genus perhaps to 
 families and orders and so on. 
 
 This being the case, what justification have we 
 for exaggerating the importance of human indi- 
 viduality and arrogating to it a position so much 
 higher than the evidence appreciable to our 
 senses warrants ? For my own part I am content 
 to accept a much humbler position in the vast 
 design of the universe and to submissively ac- 
 knowledge that if the whole of the human race 
 were swept away to-morrow the boundless plan 
 would not be thereby in any way materially af- 
 fected. 
 
 With these remarks I proceed to give my defi- 
 nitions of religion, in the construction of which 
 I have endeavored to follow the broad conditions 
 laid down for such a purpose. I give several defi- 
 
 39 
 
d&arfcen 
 
 nitions, but, though differing in words, they are 
 virtually all of the same purport: 
 
 1. The struggle of man to account for the un- 
 known. 
 
 2. The endeavor of a finite mind to place itself 
 in touch with infinity. 
 
 3. The effort of humanity to assign to itself 
 a permanent place in the scheme of the universe. 
 
 4. The craving of the reasoning faculty to 
 construct an identification of humanity with what 
 follows the dissolution of its individuality in an 
 infinity which is beyond its comprehension. 
 
 5. The conscious or unconscious striving of 
 the human intellect to explain the eternity which 
 succeeds the cessation of conscious individuality 
 and its attempt to establish personal and eternal 
 relationship with infinity. 
 
 Religion disturbs the mind comparatively little 
 in regard to the origin of all things (of being, 
 of matter, or of force) or to the infinity which 
 precedes individual conscious existence. 
 
 Savage, in his absorbing book, The Religion 
 of Evolution, quotes from an unknown author, 
 " S " : " Here we are, finite minds in the midst 
 40 
 
of infinity. And, for the finite that is moving 
 toward infinity, there is nowhere a place to an- 
 chor, but only the privilege and the opportunity 
 of endless exploration." 
 
Ich weiss nicht in wen die Rose verliebt ; 
 
 Ich aber lieb' euch all' ; 
 Rose, Schmetterling, Sonnenstrahl, 
 
 Abendstern und Nachtigall ! 
 
 Heine. 
 
 I know not on whom the rose is so sweet ; 
 
 But my love shall not fail 
 To rose and butterfly, sunbeam bright, 
 
 Starlight and nightingale. 
 
 43 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 GARDEN TEMPTATIONS 
 
 NE of the pleasantest occupations of 
 the shall I call him " hortophil," or 
 would that be too horrible? I mean 
 one who loves his garden, and for 
 ordinary use I want one word for it and "gar- 
 dener " does not meet the case. Writing is a 
 work of great trouble to me, as my hand refuses 
 to guide a pen fluently and I am therefore fre- 
 quently impelled to seek short-cut expressions. 
 What I was going to say was that one of the 
 pleasantest occupations of the garden lover in 
 the long winter evenings is the contemplation and 
 study of the nurseryman's catalogues. Some of 
 these annual illustrated price-lists issued by our 
 English seedsmen are publications of extraordi- 
 nary beauty and artistic finish, and in them we 
 feast our eyes on the most perfectly grown speci- 
 mens of every attractive flower which the heart 
 45 
 
<Batf>en 
 
 of man can desire. One's longing to acquire spec- 
 imens of each lovely plant described and depicted 
 in each successive catalogue that arrives becomes 
 so pressing that one can not shake it off. One's 
 spirit cries for the beloved objects by day and 
 dreams of them by night: 
 
 " Quien pasa las noches sonando con tigo y 
 pasa los dias llorando por ti." 
 
 Temptation, thy name is Nurseryman's Cata- 
 logue ! And if ever a temptation was made to be 
 fallen into it is this one. Whoever takes up one of 
 these irresistible, illustrated catalogues is fore- 
 doomed to buy, whether he can afford it or not. 
 Such a consideration is of no consequence. I am 
 naturally strong myself, in the absence of tempta- 
 tion ; and being strong I do not give it the go-by 
 when it presents itself before me. The more 
 alluring its garb the more determined do I become 
 not to be weak and evade it. I close with it and if 
 it is stronger than I am, it engulfs me. Human 
 nature can do no more. 
 
 I also often practise petty economies, which, 
 though reputed virtuous, is a much more expen- 
 sive luxury than buying plants one has no room 
 46 
 
Cemptationg 
 
 for and can not afford. The saving of sixpence 
 on three or four occasions successively I find 
 always results in a moral elation which nothing 
 less than the needless outlay of a sovereign can 
 assuage. 
 
 The deduction I make from this and from other 
 kindred experiences is that there is no virtue in 
 being always virtuous. The virtue becomes so 
 thick that one finds himself in the position of one 
 who from always walking barefooted contracts 
 protecting callosities on his feet. One must wear 
 shoes that are taken off periodically to keep one's 
 sole tender. 
 
 Predestination to succumb to the temptation 
 of Seedsman's catalogue recalls Omar Khayyam 
 to my mind : 
 
 Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin 
 Beset the path I was to wander in, 
 
 Thou wilt not with predestination too 
 Enmesh, and then account my fall a sin! 
 
 Oh Thou, who man of baser clay didst make 
 And who with Eden didst devise the snake, 
 For all the ill wherewith the face of man 
 Is blackened man's forgiveness give and take. 
 
 47 
 
I can forgive some of my plants for their un- 
 intended lapses and breaches of convention. Two 
 or three anemones last year each had a couple of 
 flowers on them from November all through the 
 winter and this year they are doing likewise. A 
 polyanthus and a hepatic a have also been in flower 
 since November, and as I write we are in Christ- 
 mas week. How cheering it is to see even an 
 isolated flower in the open at this season of the 
 year in England! 
 
 I have put out for early flowering a bed, a 
 small one, of hepaticas all by themselves, another 
 good-sized one of polyanthus, and a third of for- 
 get-me-nots, which should, in their pure, sweet 
 blue, look quite charming in a mass. The hepat- 
 icas, too, are such pretty welcome little flowerets, 
 blooming as. they do in frost and snow when 
 there is so little bright coloring otherwise to be 
 seen. All three plants named, moreover, are so 
 truly serviceable, and may be described when the 
 spring bedding-out season comes in like the 
 empty bottles which are called Marines, " They 
 have done their duty and are ready to do it again." 
 They have only to be laid away in the ground 
 
in some corner till the following autumn, when 
 they are ready again to perform their duties 
 afresh and cheer us with their bright looks. 
 
 When we are accustomed to the usual 
 profusions of daily life even an isolated joy like a 
 single flower in winter is a real pleasure. It is 
 profusion that kills all the enjoyment of life, the 
 secret of which is moderation. If one could 
 only always be on one's guard and stop short of 
 satiety! When once the demon of satiety takes 
 possession true enjoyment is gone. Our motto 
 should be " always to get up from the table of 
 pleasure hungry." To satiate an appetite is not 
 only to destroy it for the time being, but on each 
 occasion to blunt its edge for future use, till after 
 a short time its keenness becomes increasingly 
 and irretrievably dulled. We know this and 
 realize its truth ; but how many of us, in the mad 
 race for saturation of enjoyment, can make it a 
 rule to be strictly adhered to? 
 
 My petunias had produced in the autumn a num- 
 ber of self-sown seedlings which looked fresh and 
 strong when the parent was dying in their midst, 
 like the little scorpions I have seen eating their 
 4 49 
 
mother. I had some of them potted off and put 
 under glass, where they seem to be doing well. 
 I am now wondering when they will flower, and 
 whether they will justify the experiment. 
 
 A good many violets are in bloom, not only 
 the Parma ones in a frame, but also the common 
 ones out in the open. Last year some patches 
 blossomed so freely that the ground looked quite 
 blue with them. I have seldom seen them flower so 
 profusely before, except in fields in Switzerland, 
 and their behavior was not at all in keeping with 
 the character for modesty which they universally 
 enjoy. They did not hesitate to flaunt their 
 charms in the most demonstrative and unblushing 
 manner. 
 
 An occasional lapse of weakness of this de- 
 scription, however, according to the theory just 
 propounded, can not be regarded as vice. The 
 most immaculate and unassailable modesty must, 
 I suppose, sometimes be permitted to display its 
 charms or there would be no evidence of the ex- 
 istence of anything to be diffident about. 
 
 Some Parma violets were left out in the open 
 the previous winter, and in a quite unsheltered 
 50 
 
Cemptatfonsi 
 
 spot, too. They apparently suffered very little 
 from it, and, although not so luxuriant as their 
 protected brethren, they flowered freely in the 
 spring and are occupying the same ground a sec- 
 ond winter in good health and strength. Even 
 violets fade, though, especially when plucked, and 
 their turn must come sooner or later, like the rest. 
 
In a land of clear colors and stories, 
 In a region of shadowless hours, 
 
 Where earth has a garment of glories 
 And a murmur of musical flowers. 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 53 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 GARDEN PETS, AND OTHERS 
 
 HAT a contrast is a tropical garden 
 even in winter and spring to one 
 such as we in the north are accus- 
 tomed to! The luxuriance of the 
 two particular tropical gardens, a town one and 
 a country one, to which I refer, was sufficient 
 even at Christmas time to clothe the landscape 
 in rich foliage, in many parts shortly followed by 
 the profuse efflorescence of the trees and shrubs. 
 I lavished much care and affection on these gar- 
 dens for some years and always like to dwell upon 
 the rapid and full generosity of the return with 
 which nature repaid the labor bestowed upon 
 them. 
 
 My town garden was encircled inside its walls 
 by a carriage drive densely shaded by an avenue 
 of evergreen, dark-foliaged trees, Mimusops elengi, 
 and the sweet-scented Champack, backed by a 
 
 55 
 
broad shrubbery of variegated and gorgeously 
 colored shrubs, Crotons, Hibiscus, Aurelias, Panaxes, 
 Durantas, the flaming Poinsettia, Draccenas, and 
 many other beautiful plants and bushes, while 
 the trees were further adorned with creepers and 
 orchids. 
 
 In the center was a large lawn of the purest 
 and greenest grass that can be seen anywhere, 
 sentineled in its corners by tall spreading " Flam- 
 boyants " (Poinciana regia) whose immense bril- 
 liant mass of fire-like blossoms eclipsed every- 
 thing else while it lasted. 
 
 The drive had a cross-road which led through 
 a porch under an outlying wing of the house. This 
 porch was an object of great beauty, covered as 
 it was with creepers Ficus stipulata, with its fine 
 ivy-like leaves, and the gigantic variegated Pothos 
 clinging close to and clothing the masonry, the 
 whole entwined and festooned with Hoyas and 
 Beaumontia grandiflora. The Beaumontia, to my 
 mind, is the most magnificent of creepers, and the 
 luxuriance of its growth and opulence of its bloom 
 are probably unsurpassed by any other of its kind. 
 It mounts to the summit of high trees, say of forty 
 
 56 
 

 This Porch was of Great Beauty. 
 
ana 
 
 to fifty feet, in two years, and when wreathed in 
 its great massive clusters of rich, white, open, 
 trumpet-shaped flowers, presents a truly gorgeous 
 spectacle. 
 
 The lawn was usually rendered more attractive 
 by the graceful pose of a pair of cranes. At one 
 time I kept tall, gray Saras cranes, with red heads, 
 and at another time Demoiselle cranes and a 
 white-necked stork, a very wise and sedate bird. 
 They all lived in and stalked about the garden at 
 their own sweet will and naturally became very 
 tame. But the most characteristic and affection- 
 ate bird I ever kept is the great hornbill. 
 
 I have had two specimens of this bird on differ- 
 ent occasions and both of them showed them- 
 selves of the same marked character and intelli- 
 gence. They both slept in a box nailed to the 
 wall, and the first one used to spend his day sitting 
 by the gatekeeper at the sill of the gateway. He 
 never once showed the least inclination to pass 
 that self-imposed barrier to explore the streets 
 of the town, though he would remain for hours 
 at a time intently watching all that passed 
 by in the outer world. Nothing disturbed his 
 
 57 
 
equanimity; and, as I observed more than once, 
 when an unusually venturesome dog rushed at 
 him, he never allowed himself to be driven from 
 his post. He remained quite still, and as the 
 dog almost touched him he suddenly opened his 
 enormous beak to its fullest extent. It was curious 
 and delightful to see how equally prompt the 
 canine would-be aggressor dissimulated by pre- 
 cipitately turning a little aside and assuming an 
 extraordinary interest in some stone or weed 
 close by, as if that were the sole object of his 
 rapid excursion. 
 
 In the early morning the bird, after I had had 
 him a short time, always placed himself on the 
 steps at the house door waiting for me to come 
 out into the garden, around which he would then 
 follow me in his ungainly hops. If I passed out 
 of the door without taking any notice of him he 
 quickly followed and gently seized my trousers 
 or my fingers with his beak to remind me of his 
 presence. 
 
 My second specimen was also a most affection- 
 ate pet. Like the first, he exhibited no desire to 
 go either out of the garden or into the house, and 
 
 58 
 
anti 
 
 he never put his foot inside the door, even when 
 coaxed to do so, till one morning, to my great 
 surprise, he flew from a tree close by into the open 
 window of my little children's nursery. There 
 he sat on the floor looking with a sad and rolling 
 eye at the final packing of boxes and preparations 
 for departure, for in an hour they were about to 
 leave the country for England. He must have 
 known and realized this, for nothing else had ever 
 lured him into the house before and he never en- 
 tered it afterward. It was one of the most touch- 
 ing tributes of attachment I have known. 
 
 Sometimes he was gay and playful. I shall 
 never forget how one day he was evidently con- 
 sumed with an irresistible desire to join in a game 
 of lawn-tennis. Whilst the game was going on 
 he flopped into the middle of the court and tried 
 to seize a ball. He was " shooed" away ; but re- 
 turned again and again, always to meet with the 
 same fate. At last he saw his chance, got a ball 
 in his beak and conveyed it to the low flat roof 
 of an outhouse, where he had a game with it 
 by himself. 
 
 Poor bird ! he came to a most tragic end. The 
 59 
 
great hornbill is a clumsy bird and a very top- 
 heavy and weak flier, and these disabilities 
 brought about his death. He was on the branch 
 of a tree in the garden upon which somehow or 
 other he lost his hold. He was precipitated head 
 foremost on to the ground without being able to 
 recover himself, and broke his neck. R. I. P. 
 
 The only other bird I have had which compared 
 in intelligence and character with the hornbill 
 was a small bird of the parrot tribe, called in 
 Ecuador Cherlecres and in Brazil Marianita. One 
 of these charming little creatures accompanied me 
 everywhere on my travels for many months and 
 I never had him imprisoned in a cage or tied up. 
 He was, of course, pinioned. The height of his 
 bliss was to climb up my clothes till he reached 
 my shoulder, where he would sit contentedly and 
 whistle. He never screamed after I had once or 
 twice evinced my strong aversion to such harsh 
 noises. He allowed me to scratch him under the 
 wings, and the great repugnance of birds even 
 to lay him flat on his back, in which position, 
 until told to : " Fica morto ! " he would remain 
 " dead " till ordered to rise again. He traveled 
 60 
 
<0amen $et& and 
 
 with me in the wilds and in civilization, in boats, 
 steamers, and in a sailing ship on the ocean 
 always loose and happy in his liberty. At a hotel 
 I stayed at he wandered about everywhere, and 
 when one day he was not to be found, I was taken 
 to the kitchen, where I perceived him on a long 
 table in front of the cooks, very busy tasting the 
 good things they were preparing. 
 
 As this chapter seems to have slid from horti- 
 culture into zoology, I can not while on the sub- 
 ject of the intelligence of animals resist the 
 temptation of narrating the most remarkable case 
 of the clear exercise of reasoning which I have 
 myself witnessed in an animal. 
 
 It was an orang-utan, almost full-grown, and 
 as far as my memory serves me a male. He 
 was in a spacious cage separated by bars from 
 another similar adjoining one which was un- 
 occupied. At the back of each cage was a second 
 compartment, or bedchamber, with raised board- 
 ing and straw upon it. 
 
 After giving my very anthropomorphous 
 friend some bread to eat, I threw a piece into the 
 next cage out of his reach. He made several en- 
 
 61 
 
deavors with his long arms to take it and finding 
 this of no avail tried with his legs (or, should I 
 say in the case of quadrumana, posterior arms?), 
 which, of course, were shorter. Finding himself 
 thus nonplussed, he hesitated; but after a few 
 moments' apparent reflection his mind was made 
 up. He retired into his bedchamber, whence he 
 at once returned, dragging some of the straw 
 with him. This he then twisted roughly together 
 into a primitive sort of rope, and taking the two 
 ends in his hand pushed his arm through the bars 
 and "fished" for the bread with the bight or 
 loop. After one or two misses he caught the 
 prize and triumphantly drew it toward him. 
 
 Now, I do not wish to depreciate the intelli- 
 gence of other orang-utans and chimpanzees 
 at the London Zoo, who learn to count straws 
 and exhibit proofs of self-abnegation in taking 
 small pieces of apple whilst leaving the larger 
 ones for the keeper ; but as an example of the un- 
 tutored and deliberate exercise of the reasoning 
 faculty I think my record occupies a higher plane. 
 Indeed, many human beings, and perhaps a very 
 large proportion of them, vain as we are of our 
 
 62 
 
anD 
 
 intellectual powers, would not have been able to 
 exert their faculties to such excellent effect in 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 The orang-utan demonstrated unmistakably 
 that man is not the only genus and species " ra- 
 tionis capax," a fact which ought to humble our 
 pride. 
 
'Sag ich's euch, geliebte Baume, 
 Die ich ahndevoll gepflanzt, 
 Als die wunderbarsten Traume 
 Morgenrdthlig mich umtanzt ? 
 Ach, ihr wisst es, wie ich liebe, 
 Die so schon mich wieder liebt, 
 Die den reinsten meiner Trieb^ 
 Mir noch reiner wiedergiebt." 
 
 _____ p 
 
 Shall I tell you, dearest trees, mine, 
 
 "Wistful planted in the ground, 
 Whilst the most amazing visions 
 
 Circled like the dawn around ? 
 Oh ! you know it, how I love her 
 
 "Who my love restores so true, 
 Who my purest inspirations, 
 
 Purer still reflects like you. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 TROPICAL TREES 
 
 N the country garden that I loved in 
 the tropics there were many beauti- 
 ful trees and shrubs; great clumps 
 of tall, swaying bamboos of va- 
 rious species, graceful groups of palms, large 
 spreading rain-trees (Pithecolobium saman), the 
 canopied and sweet-scented Dim-Dim, the flaming 
 Poinciana, the rich golden Cassia fistula, the deli- 
 cately fringed mauve Lagerstramia regina, the 
 silver- and golden-balled Anthocephalus cadamba, 
 and many other large and glorious flowering 
 trees. 
 
 The creepers, too, were a sight to behold ; large 
 masses of mauve Bougainmllea, brilliant orange 
 Bignonia venusta, bright blue Clitoria and Convol- 
 vulus Pentanthus, red and white Quisqualis, lilac 
 pink Tecoma, slate blue Petroea, crimson Poivrea 
 Coccinea, pure canary yellow Allamanda, the rich 
 
pink Antigonon surely a sufficient variety of 
 massive coloring to please the most exacting. 
 
 The growth of all the vegetation was marvel- 
 ous, especially that of the rain-tree and the giant 
 bamboo. The former, though planted as small 
 trees two to three feet high and as thin as slate- 
 pencils in an avenue six feet from each side of a 
 carriage drive, at the end of their second year had 
 met and formed an archway eighteen to twenty 
 feet high over the road. At five years of age their 
 stems attained a thickness of eighteen inches to 
 two feet, and their height, with a wide spread of 
 foliage, over forty feet. 
 
 The growth of a bamboo is perhaps even more 
 remarkable. The clump of Bambusa gigantea 
 would in one season throw up fifteen to twenty 
 stems five to six inches in diameter to the height 
 of about fifty to sixty feet in two months! Im- 
 agine the vigorous constructive elaboration that 
 must take place to build up such a mass of sub- 
 stantial material from the soil and the atmosphere, 
 and what force must be exerted to draw the neces- 
 sary constituents together and adjust them to 
 their new structure ! 
 
 68 
 
Cteess 
 
 Besides the trees in the garden, I must mention 
 a few other specially attractive ones which flour- 
 ished in the neighborhood, such as the charming 
 Banhinia variegata, various splendid large speci- 
 mens of which always reminded me of some fair 
 spirit being wafted from " under the violets " up 
 toward heaven in a cloud of delicate airy blos- 
 som, and the Cassia nodosa, appareled for fully two 
 months on end with lovely rose-pink drapery 
 more dainty and fresher than apple blossom. The 
 dazzling pure orange claws, sheathed in deep 
 olive-green velvet, of the Butea frondosa can also 
 not pass unnoticed ; but there are so many strik- 
 ingly beautiful flowering trees in the tropics that 
 I can not attempt to describe more than these 
 few, which form the most vivid pictures in my 
 mind at the moment. 
 
 In the rose garden I had a rose called " Baronne 
 Pelletan de Kinkellan." It was a beautiful dark 
 red one. I have looked for it in vain in the cata- 
 logues which now come before me, but have been 
 unable to find it, though I should much like to 
 have it again. Perhaps, like some of its fair 
 sisters, it has an alias. 
 
 69 
 
d5artien jftogaicg 
 
 Among trees, my allegiance has never swerved 
 from Albizzia paludosa, which, on the whole, I think 
 is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen, if one 
 can say that one species is more attractive than 
 others of entirely diverse type and habit. It would 
 be like determining that one admired only fair 
 women; and so perhaps one does so long as one 
 of that divine type is reflected upon the retina 
 of the eye or mind. But let a dark beauty of 
 chiseled feature and flashing eye step on the 
 scene and one's allegiance begins to waver. One 
 says to himself, and perchance even would wish 
 to say to her: " Before, I thought I loved only fair 
 women, but now I am sure I love them dark ! " 
 Even as I record my undivided and supreme de- 
 votion to the Albizzia, radiant images of superb 
 cedars and firs present themselves before me and 
 remind me of the superlative admiration I gave 
 them when honored by their presence. There are 
 of course trees of different complexion, just as 
 there are women. The lime and the birch I re- 
 gard as specimens of the fair type, and the cedar, 
 cypress, and Scotch fir as specimens of the dark 
 type of beauty. Most trees, like most human be- 
 
 70 
 
The Most Beautiful Tree I Have Ever Seen. 
 
Cms 
 
 ings, are between the two, and the vast majority 
 of them are similarly crowded together and take 
 their form from the multitude which surrounds 
 them, living through their span of life without 
 ever having stretched their limbs independently 
 and without ever having experienced the joy of 
 learning their capabilities in isolation. It is only 
 in solitude that the tree or the mind can develop 
 its own habit, in a freedom and originality which 
 are incompatible with the cramping and monot- 
 onous influences of a perpetually gregarious so- 
 cial existence. 
 
 My special inamorata, for scientific nomencla- 
 ture regards all trees as feminine, the Albizzia, is 
 a blond beauty, tall and divinely fair. Her trunk 
 is smooth, light gray in color, and she begins to 
 spread her limbs soon after emerging from the 
 soil. She multiplies and expands them, gradually 
 pressing them upward through the air till they 
 overtop all her companions. At about thirty to 
 thirty-five feet from the ground her trunk divides 
 itself into some score of stems and branches sep- 
 arating from each other little by little. The first 
 foliage begins to show itself at this elevation and 
 
 71 
 
jttogaicg 
 
 the process of easy lateral expansion continues 
 as the stems rise and multiply until a gigantic 
 bundle of plumes ninety feet in height and pro- 
 portioned in the most perfect grace has been con- 
 structed. There is no single main stem beyond 
 five feet from the ground, and the whole tree in 
 its full plumage has the appearance of a most ele- 
 gantly fashioned and colossal posy. 
 
 Peerless beauties, of such striking dimensions 
 as the Albizzia I have tried to describe, are of 
 course few; but in the humbler walks of plant- 
 life there are innumerable unobtrusive graces, 
 none the less alluring and instructive for being 
 diminutive, retiring, and artless. 
 
 There is often more faultlessness in small and 
 unobtrusive things than in great ones, possibly 
 because the former have less accommodation for 
 big faults. There is undoubtedly ampler scope 
 for great failings and more temptation to commit 
 them in great people ; hence, " noblesse oblige " 
 to help to keep them straight. The law of com- 
 pensation imposes additional obligations and 
 duties with every bounty conferred. 
 
 As regards dimensions, we are all apt to pay an 
 72 
 
Croptcal 
 
 inordinate proportion of tribute to mere size, 
 which is probably an unformulated acknowledg- 
 ment of our own insignificance in space. We are 
 lost in wonder at the magnitude of infinity and 
 our minds fail to grasp it. But can we understand 
 and is it not equally amazing that there should be 
 nothing so small that it is not capable of illimita- 
 ble subdivision into endless infinity? 
 
 73 
 
Er ist so Ka.lt, der fremde Sonnenschein, 
 Ich mochte, ja ich m6cht', zu Hause sein ! 
 
 Herwogh. 
 
 The alien sunshine chills in every pore, 
 I long and yearn to be at home once more. 
 
 75 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE CHILD AND THE GARDEN 
 
 FTER our little excursion into the 
 tropics we must now return home 
 again, for the homing instinct is 
 potent in all sentient and intelligent 
 beings. We are not always able to explain to 
 ourselves the cause of this desire to return home 
 which accompanies most of us through life, 
 though of course it is manifest enough where the 
 recollections of childhood and early development 
 have been pleasant ones, as I hope they are in the 
 vast majority of cases. 
 
 But there is something more than this in it, and 
 the instinct frequently exists apart from visible 
 external allurements. It is, I suppose, the uncon- 
 scious impression of the earliest period of depend- 
 ence, when the child has virtually no separate ex- 
 istence and when every necessity and want has 
 been supplied by fostering care upon which its 
 
 77 
 
dffarden jttogaicg 
 
 very life and nourishment depended. Even apart 
 from affection, this impression remains and draws 
 the weary and troubled at all periods of life back 
 to what was the haven of its origin. 
 
 The feeling or passion has been well described 
 in a charming German song by Gumbert, Das 
 theure Vaterhaus, of which I will give a transla- 
 tion for those who do not know or are unable to 
 appreciate the original : 
 
 I know of something dearest 
 
 Upon God's great wide world, 
 That round my heart clings nearest 
 
 And closest ever furled. 
 No friend, not e'en a sweetheart, 
 
 Can lure my love to roam 
 From longings keen for fatherland 
 
 And the beloved old home. 
 
 Through life, amidst all pleasures 
 
 And joys that fill the breast, 
 The heart of hearts still treasures 
 
 The greater bliss of rest. 
 Hot tears of tender yearning 
 
 From heart and eyes must come 
 At thought of dear old fatherland 
 
 And the paternal home. 
 
 78 
 
anti t^e 
 
 And at the end, when of this life 
 The bitter course is run, 
 Then set me up a grave-mound 
 With flowers in the sun. 
 But take out from this bosom 
 Nor farther let it roam 
 The weary heart which rest can find 
 Nowhere but in its home. 
 
 I must confess that the song loses in the trans- 
 lation much of the spirit breathed in the original ; 
 but that is almost inevitable in translations. 
 
 For my own part, I live in the garden, looking 
 upon the house more as a temporary abode and 
 shelter for the night, and I consider that a garden 
 should be a home in itself and, besides other 
 things, first of all the abode of innocent, happy 
 childhood, the later recollections of which can 
 never be purer or more unalloyed than when 
 dwelling upon the sweet-scented memories of the 
 place in the open air where it played and frolicked. 
 Perhaps no one has better described what it 
 should be to all ages of life, to " the three Ages 
 of Love," as the old song has it, than the poet 
 laureate in his gem-like poem Had I a Garden. 
 
 79 
 
d&atflen 
 
 Had I a garden, it should lie 
 
 All smiling to the sun, 
 And after bird and butterfly 
 
 Children should romp and run; 
 Filling their little laps with flowers, 
 
 The air with shout and song, 
 While golden crests in guelder bowers 
 
 Rippled the whole day long. 
 
 Had I a garden, alleys green 
 
 Should lead where none would guess, 
 Save lovers, to exchange unseen, 
 
 Shy whisper and caress. 
 For them the nightingale should sing 
 
 Long after it was June, 
 And they should kiss and deem it spring, 
 
 Under the harvest moon. 
 
 Had I a garden, claustral yews 
 
 Should shut out railing wind, 
 That Poets might on sadness muse 
 
 With a majestic mind ; 
 With ear attuned and god-like gaze 
 
 Scan Heaven, and fathom Hell, 
 Then through life's labyrinthine maze 
 
 Chant to us, "All is well!" 
 
 Had I a garden, it should grow 
 
 Shelter where feeble feet 
 Might loiter long, or wander slow, 
 
 And deem decadence sweet; 
 80 
 

 Her Beloved White Pigeons Settled About Her. 
 
Ctyilti anti tyt 
 
 Pausing, might ponder on the past, 
 
 Vague twilight in their eyes, 
 Wane calmer, comelier, to the last, 
 
 Then die, as Autumn dies. 
 
 All gardens, I suppose, bear traces of child- 
 hood, either in the shape of the little retired plots 
 called " the children's gardens " or in other forms. 
 In my garden, the period of children's plots, alas ! 
 has passed; but I am still able to cherish marks 
 of reminiscence left by little visitors whose fairy 
 presence has from time to time vied with the flow- 
 ers in bringing home to one the beauties and joys 
 of nature. One delightful little being, herself one 
 of the fairest and gayest of flowers, has left be- 
 hind her numerous mementoes. One of these is 
 a rose-bush, "Black Prince," specially appropri- 
 ated, on her own initiative, by the little " White 
 Princess," to be cared for and tended in future on 
 her behalf. 
 
 Another is a real memento mori, the grave of one 
 of her beloved white pigeons about the place, who 
 flew to her and settled about her as though they 
 also, like the flowers, recognized her as one of 
 themselves. The poor bird fell a prey to the 
 6 81 
 
terrier "Tim," usually a well-behaved and hu- 
 mane dog where house pets are concerned. In 
 this case, however, a moment of excitement evi- 
 dently made him forget his accustomed self-con- 
 trol in the face of temptation, or possibly he also 
 thought that temptation was made to be fallen 
 into and that to flee from it was a sign of weak- 
 ness. However that may be, the consequences 
 of wrong-doing are never confined to the wrong- 
 doer, which must be the reason why wrong-doing 
 is wrong, and the bird was killed. The little 
 " Princess " demanded an immediate funeral ; but 
 as bedtime was near this was deferred to the next 
 day, when the obsequies were performed and the 
 body was consigned to earth under the beech-tree, 
 close to the grave of a departed specimen of the 
 offending canine race. The selection of an epi- 
 taph for the tombstone, which consisted of a large 
 wooden label, next became a subject of anxious 
 deliberation, the final solution resulting in the 
 eloquent and original inscription : " Poor Pigeon 
 Naughty Timmy." 
 
 A remarkable incident/ which I must relate, 
 occurred among these pigeons mostly white fan- 
 82 
 
C^ilD an& t^c 
 
 tails and magpies. The first young bird fledged 
 after her lamented majesty's death last year de- 
 veloped a perfectly drawn black edge over the 
 whole arc of its otherwise pure white tail. 
 
 Other souvenirs, forgotten at the departure and 
 which await their owner's return, were a little 
 wooden spade and a golliwog. The poor golliwog 
 presumably must have strayed away from the 
 house and lost his bearings. When his mistress 
 departed he was not to be found anywhere and 
 was given up for lost. What was my astonish- 
 ment, therefore, about a week later, to find him 
 sitting on one of the cross seats of the punt which 
 floats under the name of the little " Princess " on 
 the stream running through the garden, exalted 
 in its humility by the appellation of " The Drain." 
 The poor creature, though still possessed of suffi- 
 cient strength to sit up, had a most wobegone 
 appearance, and the way in which his head 
 drooped upon his chest, and the vacant, glassy 
 look in his eye, denoted eloquently the mental and 
 physical privation and suffering he must have 
 undergone. I was really quite startled when I 
 saw him again, not having heard from any one 
 
 83 
 
of his reappearance, and my imagination at once 
 made clear to me what adventurous hardships he 
 must have been exposed to. I conjectured that, 
 without the graceful and charming companions 
 of the golliwog in the story-book, having lost his 
 way, he wandered about for days, anxious and 
 wet, for the weather was unpropitious, in the 
 shrubberies, sleeping the nights under such shel- 
 ter as the thickest box-bushes or rhododendrons 
 afforded. At length, having searched in vain for 
 his friends, who were comfortably housed in the 
 doll's house and story-book, he doubtless reached 
 the banks of " The Drain," famished, bedraggled, 
 and footsore. The gardener says he found him 
 on the ground and put him in the punt ; but that 
 must be a pleasant fiction, for my own conviction 
 is that from the shores of " The Drain " the golli- 
 wog saw the punt with his mistress* name painted 
 upon it in red letters and that having learned to 
 read he recognized these, swam off from the bank, 
 clambered over the side of the punt and sat him- 
 self upon the seat to rest from his exertions. If 
 any one doubts this account of what must have 
 happened they are welcome to inspect "The 
 
 84 
 
CDttft an& t^e 
 
 Drain," the punt with the name on it, and the 
 golliwog himself ; and I can further, if need be, as- 
 sure any disbeliever that I really found the little 
 dark-complexioned gentleman on the seat looking 
 very disconsolate, and he was wet! Could fur- 
 ther proof be needed, even by Sherlock Holmes? 
 The golliwog may, moreover, still be seen sitting 
 on a shelf over the window of my dressing-room, 
 and he is now dry. I have no wish to fortify my 
 case by keeping him permanently moist. 
 
 I can not end this chapter without quoting 
 Harold Begbie's beautiful lines on Childhood : 
 
 How like an open flow'r thou art, 
 Dear life aglow with all that's sweet, 
 
 Blue sunny eyes, a bounding heart, 
 Innocent hands and feet. 
 
 In what cool paths thy footsteps run, 
 A garden plot thine orbed earth: 
 
 And all thy quest beneath the sun 
 Innocent joy and mirth. 
 
 Thy prattle thrills the quivering lark, 
 Thy laughter tips the rippling corn, 
 
 All happy things rejoicing mark 
 Thy coming, like the morn. 
 
 85 
 
The sunbeams glint thy woodland way, 
 The squirrel skips before thy feet, 
 
 And bluebells in the bracken say 
 Little hands gather us : we are sweet ! 
 
 I know not on this thorny earth 
 
 A purity so white, intense ; 
 Sin howling at the doors of mirth 
 
 Shrinks from such innocence. 
 
 Oh that the chafing waves of time 
 With muffled moan and stifled roar, 
 
 With all the ages' silt and slime, 
 Fret at this green, green shore ! 
 
 Oh that my jealous eyes must see 
 This joyance fade from lip and eye, 
 
 And ever 'twixt my child and me 
 A chilling shadow lie. 
 
 Oh that this smooth white brow must cloud, 
 The calm of these brave eyes be riven, 
 
 Not all thy thoughts be said aloud, 
 Not all thy smiles be given I 
 
 Oh that these little feet must stand 
 Where now I stumble, grope and pray, 
 
 And where another Father's hand 
 Alone must guide thy way! 
 
 86 
 
Die Herrlichkeit der Welt ist immer adaquat der 
 Herrlichkeit des Geistes, der sie betrachtet. 
 
 Heine. 
 
 The splendor of the world is always commensurate 
 With the elevation of the mind which contemplates it. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 TRAINING THE GARDEN 
 
 HAD always heard that very old 
 elms were dangerous trees on ac- 
 count of the risk of collapse of their 
 branches; but I did not realize the 
 warning adequately till last winter, when sud- 
 denly, one quiet day, when there was no wind, a 
 limb fell off a large elm which stands just inside 
 my hedge near the road. The main branch meas- 
 ured twenty-two inches in diameter and the whole 
 of it was sound and without a trace of decay in 
 any part of it. It fell in a most considerate man- 
 ner, its main fork astride the hedge, which it 
 therefore left undamaged. I shortened the outer 
 leg and with the aid of a rope and some strong 
 men tumbled the whole branch across the road. 
 The proportions of the bough may be realized 
 when I mention that it provided exercise for my- 
 self and guests, who are always expected to join 
 89 
 
in the labor, on and off during most of the winter, 
 in sawing and cutting. 
 
 It furnished many sturdy blocks as pedestals 
 for large flower tubs and for other purposes; 
 heavy frames for rustic benches; cross-sections 
 polished I made up into tables and stools, and the 
 house was supplied with firelogs through the cold 
 weather, the cutting and splitting of which 
 warmed one thoroughly on the bleakest day. 
 
 It was sad to see the poor tree, still strong and 
 sound to all appearance, losing his limbs, another 
 smaller one having also dropped off some months 
 later. 
 
 I can, however, imagine his saying, like The 
 Fallen Elm, in Veronica's Garden: 
 
 Nay, pity me not, I am living still, 
 Though prone on the plowed-up earth. 
 
 They will carry me in from the well-walled garth. 
 
 Where the logs are split and stored, 
 And lay me down where the blazing hearth 
 
 Glints warm on the beakered board. 
 
 I shall roar my stave through the chimney's throat, 
 
 Oh, I am not dead, though my head droops low, 
 That used in the Spring to soar 
 90 
 
emitting 
 
 To the sky half-way, and the friendless crow 
 Will nest in my fork no more. 
 
 So sorrow you not if I cease to soar, 
 
 And am sundered by saw and bill: 
 Rather hope that, like me, when you're green no 
 more, 
 
 You may comfort your kindred still. 
 
 These thoughts are certainly very comforting 
 when one is pained by the sight of the living dis- 
 solution of a vegetable monarch in all its apparent 
 undecayed health and strength, and at the summit 
 of its glory. 
 
 In trying to explain to myself the reason of this 
 seemingly unaccountable dismemberment of very 
 old elms, I notice that the lower and heavier 
 branches, probably by reason of their accretion 
 of bulk, very gradually assume an increasingly 
 horizontal position, thus unfitting them more and 
 more to bear the strain of their own weight, 
 which, as their angle becomes more obtuse in re- 
 lation to the parent stem, eventually compasses 
 their collapse. No doubt the fiber also loses elas- 
 ticity and becomes more brittle with age. Some 
 of the lower branches of another, my favorite, 
 
d&atflen 
 
 elm stand out almost horizontal from the trunk, 
 and from their great weight I fear their doom is 
 also not far off. 
 
 A fine, large, and well-grown ash has also dis- 
 appeared from the strip of ground which I call 
 " The Wilderness," on the other side of our thirty- 
 two feet broad " Drain." It was blown down in a 
 violent gale which swept over the country last 
 October. It had a fine, sound, straight stem, over 
 fifty feet of which were sold for timber, whilst the 
 branches again served for useful domestic pur- 
 poses. The trunk fell right across the stream, 
 and its removal occasioned much hard and inter- 
 esting work; but I would much rather see it 
 flourishing in its old place among its stately 
 fellows, where its presence would be a greater 
 comfort to me than its economic utilization. 
 
 It always seems to me a comparatively easier 
 and shorter matter to build a royal palace than to 
 grow a regal tree, and I am thus correspondingly 
 distressed at the loss of what it is at least impos- 
 sible to replace within a period measured by the 
 ordinary expectation of individual human life. 
 
 The " Wilderness," which I have just men- 
 92 
 
Crafning ttye (0artien 
 
 tioned, was, when I entered into its possession 
 and enjoyment with the rest of the domain, a 
 small strip of land, bounded by a high and ill-kept 
 hedge, and separated from the garden by a 
 banked-up brook which I elegantly christened 
 "The Drain." It was densely overgrown with 
 wild ivy and garlic, the soil thickly interwoven all 
 over with the creeping roots of stinging nettles, 
 this " jungly " undergrowth shaded by the fine 
 but maimed elm aforesaid, a handsome chestnut, a 
 few tall and well- grown ash, some alders along 
 the water's edge, and a number of firs. 
 
 I had the undergrowth cleared away, the nettles 
 and garlic as far as possible rooted out, and put 
 in quantities of bluebells, primroses, common 
 daffodils, crocuses, lilies-of-the-valley, and other 
 roots; whilst I scattered freely about a plentiful 
 supply of seed of foxglove, purple loosestrife, and 
 meadowsweet. With the last two along the 
 bank I planted rushes, marsh-marigold, and water 
 forget-me-nots. 
 
 My plan of endeavoring to produce a wilder- 
 ness of wild flowers I hope will eventually suc- 
 ceed, and if it does the irregular masses of color 
 
 93 
 
dPartien 
 
 will look very pretty under the trees from the 
 garden side of the stream. The foxgloves have 
 come up in thousands, and some of the meadow- 
 sweet and loosestrife also exhibited themselves 
 last summer, so I may hope they will become 
 firmly established. The other things can take 
 care of themselves. Some Spanish irises, how- 
 ever, were dug out and destroyed by water-rats, 
 against which I subsequently waged war with 
 considerable success. 
 
 I suppose in time I shall learn how to make 
 flowers grow in what was and still strives to re- 
 main a wilderness of garlic, nettles, and ivy ; but 
 one's education into a proper understanding of 
 the secret processes of nature is always a matter 
 of time and patience. 
 
 A charming writer who recently made A 
 Journey to Nature says: "You want to know 
 the secret of nature; well, you will have to be- 
 come an obedient part of it, then you will know, 
 but you will lose the power and the desire to tell 
 it." How many, who have communed with na- 
 ture, must have felt this. 
 
 Our education, unfortunately, does not attempt 
 94 
 
Ctafnftig t^e d5artien 
 
 to place us in our proper relationship with na- 
 ture, and we are seldom taught to understand its 
 commonest manifestations. How many "edu- 
 cated " persons in modern society can explain, for 
 instance, what causes the rain to fall, why the sea 
 is salt, or what impels the wind to blow? 
 
 We inherit but little knowledge and much 
 prejudice and ignorance, and during a great por- 
 tion of our so-called educational period our minds 
 are still further prejudiced and warped by the 
 learning instilled into them against all other con- 
 flicting knowledge. We are not trained suffi- 
 ciently into simple receptivity of all classes of 
 knowledge and taught to observe and appraise 
 and compare and deduce for ourselves of our own 
 initiative. 
 
 Our great difficulty in mature life is to see 
 clearly through the mist in which we have been 
 enveloped in our youth and to " depolarize " our 
 minds from bias and symbolic jargon. Without 
 some determined effort to see things from outside 
 our one-sided selves, there is but little possibility 
 of our discerning anything as it really is. 
 
 Education ought to impart the means of acquir- 
 95 
 
ing knowledge reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
 For the rest, in theory, we should be brought up 
 in the gutter, with our minds open and our pow- 
 ers of original observation developed to the ut- 
 most. In practise, I fear this scheme would not 
 answer ; but perhaps more practical results would 
 be attained if the theory were kept a little more 
 in view than it is. The proper inculcation of a 
 spirit of discipline would also be somewhat in- 
 compatible with such a theory. Discipline, how- 
 ever, is apt to be looked upon by many, like virtue 
 or humility, as an excellent attribute for other 
 people. 
 
 The prejudice instilled before the mind reaches 
 its strength of independence is, of course, great- 
 est in the matter of ethics, as we are not given 
 a broad code, as Descartes set to himself, of a 
 " Morale par provision," to serve until such time 
 as a better one can be substituted. Neither are 
 we warned sufficiently that our virtuous inclina- 
 tions ought to be watched and are as likely to lead 
 us astray as our vices. The latter, if at all pro- 
 nounced, are apparent to ourselves as well as to 
 others and obtrude themselves for correction and 
 
Ctsinfng ttje 
 
 subjugation. But our affections, generosity, so- 
 ciability, sensibility, and desire to please are much 
 more insidious and are liable to grow and finally 
 to run riot till they have led us into trouble and 
 even into vice itself. The obvious corollary of 
 this would be that it is sounder to enter upon a 
 controlled career of moderate vice, to be modified 
 and transformed by the experience of the lessons 
 it teaches, than to let unbridled virtue pursue its 
 mad career unadmonished and unchecked. 
 
 There is only one more item in connection with 
 the education of the young which I wish to refer 
 to and that is the fatal gift of memory. . I always 
 call it a fatal gift in youth, as in most cases it is 
 made use of at the expense of the free and full de- 
 velopment of the understanding and reasoning 
 powers. This fact will be patent to all who ob- 
 serve and think. 
 
 Memory, though a splendid gift, is apt to do 
 away with the necessity of intellectual exertion, 
 as wealth only too often supplants the need and 
 destroys the desire for work of any description. 
 
 97 
 
i Donde te escondes, Violeta bella ? 
 
 i For que asi esquivas mirar la luz ? 
 Tu que no puedes vivir sin ella. 
 
 i Buscas de sombras dense capuz ? 
 
 Sal, florecilla, lanza al ambiente 
 
 Tu grata esencia, tu dulce olor ; 
 Deja que el lirio te bese ardiente, 
 
 Te brinde puro su casto amor. 
 
 Torres Caicedo. 
 
 Beautiful Violet, where art thou hiding? 
 
 "Why dost thou shun to look out on the light ? 
 Thou, who thy life to the sun art confiding, 
 
 Seek'st thou by day the concealment of night ? 
 
 Flow'ret, come out and distil on the sunbeam 
 Thy delicate fragrance, thy perfume so sweet, 
 
 And suffer the lily to kiss thee in one gleam 
 Of love pure and chaste, proffered coy at thy feet. 
 
 99 
 
CHAPTER X 
 THE COMING OF SPRING 
 
 HE calendar tells me, as if it were an 
 incontrovertible fact, like the rest of 
 the events it chronicles, that " spring 
 commences " on the 2ist day of 
 March. But although this is brought to my no- 
 tice as a fact in a beautiful garden diary sup- 
 plied by one of our great seedsmen, for the mo- 
 ment I refuse to accept it, as once, some time ago 
 on a sea voyage, after receiving presents and cele- 
 brating a day I had given out as my birthday, I 
 placidly announced to my disenchanted friends 
 and admirers that in personal matters I did not 
 consider myself bound by the Gregorian calendar. 
 I never could understand what difference it 
 might make to them whether my birthday was 
 on one date or another, according to their particu- 
 lar mode of reckoning ; but it evidently did make 
 a difference, and I took their interest in such a 
 101 
 
detail concernijng my. first appearance on this sub- 
 Juhgry sphere-' as:a; great compliment. I hope they 
 will not be annoyed, but will evince an equal 
 concern in my affairs, when I now pronounce a 
 similar repudiation of an accepted astronomical 
 item recorded in the calendars of most civilized 
 nations. 
 
 In my garden I wish to consider that spring 
 set in on the 7th of March. In so far as the birds 
 are concerned it might have begun in the middle 
 of January, for many of them have been singing 
 since then. Indeed, the larks in the neighboring 
 fields have hardly ceased to fill the air with their 
 music all the winter. It seems to me that I 
 have never crossed the meadows without hear- 
 ing them, and I have watched them and lis- 
 tened to their songs even in the midst of a snow- 
 storm. 
 
 On the yth and the few days which have elapsed 
 since, the garden, in comparison with winter, has 
 looked quite gay with its long fringes and clumps 
 of crocuses, snowdrops, violets, and hepaticas in 
 full bloom, and it is quite clear the winter slumber 
 is over, and the hope sown in autumn has devel- 
 102 
 
Coming of 
 
 oped into full-fledged expectation. The first 
 primroses, chionodoxas, and polyanthus are also 
 in flower, whilst the rhododendrons, azaleas, 
 cherries, the older anemones, daffodils, and other 
 trees and bulbs have pushed out their healthy 
 flower-buds. Many of the irises, hyacinths, tulips, 
 narcissus, delphiniums, campanulas, sweet-will- 
 iams, Canterbury bells, and pansies show vig- 
 orous new growth; and the leaf -buds have 
 swollen and are opening on roses, honeysuckle, 
 Billy Button, clematis, lilacs, and others. The 
 hawthorn will soon be ready to burst, and on one 
 patch of hedge, which is always the earliest, the 
 buds are unfolding into little fresh green leaves. 
 The crimson ramblers are covered with new ver- 
 dure, and the protected seedlings of annuals are 
 giving promise in thousands. The early sweet- 
 peas have braved the winter, by the aid of a little 
 protecting straw, are two to three inches above 
 ground, and have been " sticked." 
 
 If all this, when I am now writing on the loth 
 
 of March, is not stronger evidence than the bald 
 
 and unsupported statement that " spring com- 
 
 mences " on the 2ist of March, may some of my 
 
 103 
 
dffar&ett 
 
 buds be cut off by late frosts as they probably 
 will be. 
 
 The Spring has come! The buds peep out 
 To see "God's lidless eye" again, 
 
 To feel the glow its glory sheds 
 In quickened sprout, from root and grain. 
 
 Each bulb and stalk puts forth its bloom 
 
 At mandate of that orb sublime, 
 Whose mighty gaze draws out their blush 
 
 And keeps them flaming all the time. 
 
 But modesty and homage too 
 
 In shrub and timber neither fail: 
 Their limbs bared in the winter's blast 
 
 With soft green mantle now the veil. 
 
 Thus may we learn from tree and root 
 
 Our inward squalor to entomb, 
 And let Spring bud within our hearts 
 
 To bring forth grace in bounteous bloom. 
 
 I wish I were an artist in words, as Pierre 
 Loti, for instance, to paint the beauties of the 
 awakening of vegetable nature and the aspects 
 of the landscape in spring as he depicts the 
 scenes he visits in his Japonneries d' Automne. 
 No landscape ever idealized on canvas can, to my 
 104 
 
Coming of 
 
 thinking, approach the realities one can see daily 
 a thousand-fold in garden, wood, and stream; 
 and it is for this reason that I always prefer life- 
 like pictures of figures, in which phases of char- 
 acter, beauty, emotion, and passion may more 
 easily be, and sometimes are, transcended. 
 
 I am aware the expression of such views may 
 be assailed from many quarters ; but my tastes are 
 unorthodox and I do not even play ping-pong or 
 seek pleasure in shooting birds. 
 
 After all, beauty is a thing that is felt more by 
 those " qui se savourent en silence," than by those 
 who break out into facile ecstasy and gush. And 
 beauty is without doubt only really appreciated 
 where it is deeply felt and penetrates the whole 
 being. The mere seeing of beauty as compared 
 with the deep sensation of silent and expression- 
 less emotion it creates, is rather like comparing 
 the practical view of one person, that the sky 
 looked as if it had " had a mustard plaster on it " 
 and the sea "like mutton gravy getting cold," 
 with the speechless rapture pervading the inmost 
 senses of another in keen appreciation of a glori- 
 ous sunset reflected upon the waters. 
 105 
 
I always remember how I used to resent such 
 an intrusion upon my esthetic conviction as a 
 remark that my little children were beautiful. 
 That such an observation should be made to me 
 who felt their loveliness far deeper than any casual 
 comer possibly could, seemed to me like an insult 
 to my intelligence and an outrage upon my most 
 hallowed perceptions. No doubt others experi- 
 ence like sensations in similar circumstances, and 
 this being the case, we may derive therefrom the 
 moral that it is desirable to exercise great circum- 
 spection in our approach, even in commendation, 
 upon whatever may appertain to the intimate spir- 
 itual domain of others. 
 
 I am afraid if I had put my thoughts into words 
 under the provocation to which I have alluded, 
 they might have taken some such form as : " You 
 idiot ! Do you think I do not feel what you only 
 see ? " This may sound very ungraceful and un- 
 gracious; but one's thoughts are not under the 
 same control as their expression. 
 
 In the autumn I planted a wistaria against the 
 stem of a tall ash and another one by itself in the 
 paddock, where I want to see if I can train it into 
 1 06 
 
Coming of 
 
 a standard, or at least into a canopy with one 
 strong central stem. This will of course require 
 stiffening support for some time to come, and the 
 branches or shoots which will eventually be al- 
 lowed to grow out at the top will no doubt want 
 some umbrella or tent-shaped frame to hold 
 them up. 
 
 Several Clematis Montana have also been put in, 
 one of which is likewise against a tree and an- 
 other against a wall, whence it can climb on to an 
 old yew, which it shows every intention of doing 
 with spirit and thoroughness. A Clematis Henryi, 
 a C. Flammula, and a C. Coccinea are being grown 
 on poles and, as they are all shooting up vigorous- 
 ly, I hope they will make some show even this 
 year. 
 
 The days are getting so much longer and the 
 temperature is so mild that one can enjoy more 
 of the fresh air out of the house, which is of im- 
 portance. Indeed, I always think that fresh air 
 is even of greater value to our health than good 
 food, since we nourish our blood with it at every 
 breath we draw. What a difference it must make, 
 therefore, to our well-being if we habitually 
 107 
 
breathe good, pure air. There seem, however, to 
 be many people, to judge by the manner in which 
 they shut themselves up in their houses and in 
 railway carriages, who flourish, or at least get 
 along creditably, in an atmosphere of carbonic 
 acid which makes me feel faint and sick. 
 
 108 
 
Es reden und trauemen die Menschen viel 
 
 Von besseren kiinftigen Tagen, 
 Nach einem gluecklichen gold'nen Ziel 
 
 Sicht man sie rennen und jagen, 
 Die Welt wird alt und wird wieder Jung, 
 Doch der Mensch hofft immer Verbesserung. 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 Men talk by day and dream by night 
 
 Of future better days in store, 
 And toward a happier golden height 
 
 Their muscles strive, their spirits soar, 
 The world grows old and young again, 
 Man's hope fixed on a higher plane. 
 
 109 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 BLOSSOMS 
 
 T occurs to me every now and then 
 whilst writing these " reflections " 
 that some of them may possibly 
 hurt the feelings of, offend, or be 
 deplored by some of my friends whose views of 
 humanity and its destiny, of life with its ethics 
 and morals, and of the relative positions of re- 
 ligion and evolution differ from mine. In such 
 matters, however, if I set down anything at all, 
 and I have proposed myself to indite whatever 
 reflections suggest themselves to my mind, I must 
 say truthfully what I think. 
 
 The militant missionary spirit is not in me and 
 I am neither seeking to make converts nor to dis- 
 turb the faith that is in any one, but I give way to 
 none in the recognition of the incalculable benefit, 
 sometimes to the individual and always to the 
 race, of striving after an ideal. The particular 
 in 
 
temperament, however, which strives after a high 
 ideal, be this ever so imaginative, illusive, or im- 
 possible, it seems to me is just as much the out- 
 come and instrument of evolution as is the more 
 practical impulse of the struggle for food, pro- 
 tection, and the necessities of life generally, all 
 of which serve the great object of preserving and 
 improving the species. 
 
 I am quite prepared to find that many take 
 what they may call a " higher " view ; but I must 
 confess that to me nothing seems more magnifi- 
 cent and sublime than the inexorable and, what 
 astronomers and geologists would term, " sec- 
 ular " processes which have been elaborating the 
 great scheme of constructive evolution from all 
 eternity, on to an infinite future into which our 
 limited and finite vision is powerless to penetrate, 
 even in speculation. 
 
 Of one thing I feel sure and upon it I have no 
 misgivings. It is that nothing I may say can en- 
 danger the truth. The truth must always stand, 
 however it may be assailed. 
 
 When the divinity student said that in free dis- 
 cussion there was danger to truth, the professor 
 
 JI2 
 
replied : " I didn't know Truth was such an in- 
 valid. Truth is tough. It will not break, like a 
 bubble at a touch ; nay, you may kick it about all 
 day, like a football, and it will be round and full at 
 evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say that Truth gets 
 well if she is run over by a locomotive, while Error 
 dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger? I 
 never heard that a mathematician was alarmed for 
 the safety of a demonstrated proposition. I think, 
 generally, that fear of open discussion implies 
 feebleness of inward conviction, and great sensi- 
 tiveness to the expression of individual opinion is 
 a mark of weakness." 
 
 With this statement before me I shall not fear 
 that either Truth or my friends can be injured by 
 any views I may give expression to. 
 
 I just referred to the immense advantage of 
 striving after an ideal, and when I advanced that 
 proposition I did not intend to limit the ideal in 
 any way. It may be an ideal of moral, intellectual, 
 artistic, physical, industrial, or any other excel- 
 lence, and it may appertain to the natural ephem- 
 eral life of the individual or to the eternal life 
 he expects or firmly believes he will embark upon 
 8 113 
 
hereafter. I only wish to submit that the hope 
 of attaining such an ideal would equally appear 
 to be one of the favored instruments whereby the 
 glorious design of evolution accomplishes its ob- 
 jects. Hope, like other inspirations, has been 
 evolved and developed in us as an aid to our ad- 
 vancement. 
 
 Die Hoffnung fuchrt ihn in's Leben ein, 
 
 Sie umflattert den froelichen Knaben, 
 
 Den Juengling bezaubert ihr Geisterschein, 
 
 Sie wird mit dem Greis nicht begraben; 
 
 Denn beschliesst er im grabe den miiden Lauf, 
 
 Noch am Grabe pflanzt er die Hoffnung auf. 
 
 Hope enters with him into life 
 And flutters round the joyous child ; 
 Its charm sustains the youth in strife 
 And with old age is reconciled, 
 For loosed in death the weary bond, 
 The grave rears hope of things beyond. 
 
 A change of scene has now come over the gar- 
 den. April has just passed and brought new and 
 enchanting developments in its train. The cro- 
 cuses, hepaticas, and snowdrops have long gone 
 to their rest, and even all the hyacinths and earlier 
 daffodils are over. The beds and foot of the long 
 114 
 
hedge are gay with wall-flowers, polyanthus, for- 
 get-me-nots, primroses, and anemones of many 
 colors, white, blue, violet, purple, pink, scarlet, 
 and lake red ; while in all parts of the garden there 
 are tulips and large pansies in flower of the rich- 
 est hues and combinations. The cherry blossom 
 has been glorious, especially two very large trees, 
 so densely clothed in purest white that they 
 looked as if they were covered with a thick mantle 
 of snow. The first pears have shed their petals. 
 They were the most forward in bud among the 
 fruit-trees, and my gardener, remarking upon it, 
 said : " That's the worst of pears ; a few fine days 
 tempt them beyond all bounds." This seems 
 somewhat like a vegetable illustration of my 
 proposition that temptation is made to be fallen 
 into. 
 
 The apples are of course beautiful and this is a 
 fat year of blossoms following upon a lean one. 
 Many trees are in full bloom and there are others 
 to come. 
 
 All the foliage trees and shrubs are clothed in 
 tender verdure and only the ash, walnut, and the 
 cautious mulberry lag behind. The last of these 
 
never exposes his leaves to the remotest risk of 
 night frost in spring, and sheds them before his 
 neighbors evince any fear of the chills of autumn. 
 A short time ago it looked as if the ash would 
 come out before the oak ; but our sturdy and " an- 
 cient friend " has caught him up and, covered 
 with fresh amber-green foliage, has left him far 
 behind and only just beginning to put out his 
 little flower-tufts. If old country sayings are to 
 be relied upon, we shall have a dry summer, as 
 we have certainly had a dry April. 
 
 When the oak's before the ash 
 There will be a little splash ; 
 When the ash before the oak 
 There will be a heavy soak. 
 
 The pink flowering currant and the yellow ber- 
 beris have been coloring the shrubberies and a 
 mauve pink rhododendron is gay with profuse 
 bloom. 
 
 On the 1 8th of April I found that a large Gloire 
 
 de Dijon, or " Glor de Dye John," as I frequently 
 
 hear it called, on the south wall of the house, not 
 
 only had a number of well-developed buds upon it, 
 
 116 
 
TBlO&fotttg 
 
 but also that these were covered with aphides, 
 which I promptly brushed off where I could 
 reach them. This noxious little insect, however, 
 always interests me, as it constitutes the herds 
 of liliputian cattle tended and milked by some 
 species of ants, and, more interesting still, fur- 
 nishes one of the examples in the animal king- 
 dom of parthenogenesis, or virginal reproduction, 
 among its various methods of procreation. 
 
 I am glad to say the nightingale has returned, 
 though he has not yet established himself perma- 
 nently for a nightly serenade, as I hope he will a 
 little later on. The cuckoo, however, does not 
 cease to call from early morn till evening, and his 
 " pint " and his flower, Ladies' smock, came with 
 him in the hedgerows and meadows. The ap- 
 pearance of flies .and wasps also denotes the 
 change of season. 
 
 My flowers in the grass have in part been a great 
 joy, especially the snowdrops, crocuses, scillas, 
 and daffodils. Some of the fritillaries and a few 
 dog-violets have also come up; but the chiono- 
 doxas, tulipa sylvestris, and anemone appenina have 
 done no good. On the other hand, common tulips 
 117 
 
and hyacinths put in the grass their second year 
 have flowered well, the spikes of the hyacinths, 
 both in beds and in the grass, being as fine as they 
 were the first year. Some tulips left in a bed, 
 rather deep, a number of years ago, have sent up 
 a bunch of flowers regularly each of the four 
 springs I have now been here, and some hyacinths 
 left undisturbed have flowered better their third 
 year than when forced their first season. 
 
 My Gladioli Colvillei, which were well estab- 
 lished and I thought quite hardy, had early in 
 February thrown up an abundance of leaves, 
 showing how well they were thriving. Being 
 assured the cold would not hurt them, they were 
 left unprotected, with the result that the severe 
 frosts between the loth and igth of February cut 
 them all down, and it is now, I fear, evident that 
 they are not going to grow again. The less for- 
 ward ones newly planted in the autumn are safe. 
 
 On one of my garden paths which is lined with 
 box some stray violets have become entwined in 
 the stems of the box, and in that position have 
 flowered profusely, so that a few yards of the path 
 have been lined with a neat edging of violets. 
 118 
 
The effect is so attractive that at the proper time 
 I mean to extend it along both sides of the walk. 
 The marsh-marigolds on the margin of " The 
 Drain " are flowering profusely, and the meadow- 
 sweet, of which I scattered seed two years ago, 
 are growing so strong that they promise an 
 abundant harvest. 
 
 119 
 
Diese graue Wolkenschaar 
 
 Stieg aus einem Meer von Preuden ; 
 
 Heute muss ich dafur leiden 
 Das ich gestern glucklich war. 
 
 Heine. 
 
 These gray, sombrous clouds that soar 
 Rose up from a sea of gladness ; 
 And to-day I'm plunged in sadness 
 
 As I was content before. 
 
 121 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 SUGGESTIONS 
 
 are now on the threshold of the 
 last week in May, and meteoro- 
 logical experts say that the tem- 
 perature has been lower so far 
 during this "merry" month than for sixty-one 
 years past. For my garden I regret it and would 
 gladly see my plants and trees enjoying some 
 warmth and sunshine, though for myself and my 
 own comfort, or discomfort, I accept the weather 
 as it comes. The weather itself only seriously 
 affects me, apart from solicitude for my surround- 
 ings, when the atmosphere is charged with elec- 
 tricity and there is " thunder in the air," which 
 always depresses me terribly and fills me with a 
 vague and unreasoning sense of undefined im- 
 pending disaster. 
 
 It has been prognosticated that this weather is 
 to last well into June ; but at the moment I am out 
 123 
 
d&ar&en 
 
 of temper and bear in mind that scientific experts 
 who examined Mont Pelee the day before its erup- 
 tion gave assurances that there was no danger to 
 be apprehended. I also can not help thinking that 
 probably the same person who classified lies into 
 lies, d d lies, and statistics, must have tabulated 
 liars of varying degrees into liars, d d liars, and 
 scientific experts. But, as already said, I am out 
 of humor, perhaps more with the income-tax col- 
 lector than the weather, and "across the barren 
 desert of my brain there strays not even the 
 starved camel of an idea." 
 
 At present I am looking at things with what 
 may be called a jaundiced eye, and the prepara- 
 tions which are going on for the coming corona- 
 tion, the occupation of the Lord Chancellor hear- 
 ing and deciding claims from the high and mighty 
 to perform menial services, the defacement of 
 Westminster Abbey and other churches and ven- 
 erable public buildings with hoardings for sight- 
 seers, the bacchanalian celebration of "Hog- 
 manay Night" a short time ago, the sight of a 
 British funeral with its ghastly nodding plumes 
 and hired mourners, all parade themselves before 
 124 
 
my disordered vision and make me wonder 
 whether the community I belong to is really an 
 enlightened and civilized one. The coronation 
 and the grotesqueness of its pageants makes me 
 reflect how the gods must laugh, if their exer- 
 cising any such human attribute is conceivable, 
 to see poor humanity, who can not add a cubit to 
 its stature, a day to its life, or control even any of 
 the local physical forces which constantly threaten 
 its very existence, masquerading and strutting 
 about in its borrowed, or purchased, plumes. And 
 yet, though I may not join in the festivities, I do 
 not feel, as perhaps I should, " like the puddle that 
 was proud of standing alone while the river 
 rushed by." In my present frame of mind the 
 celebration of events or commemorations by 
 means of feasts and balls reminds me of the 
 Saturnalia of ancient days, from which some of 
 them differ only in degree; and as for a funeral, 
 I can call to mind no savage rite among the many 
 I have witnessed more humiliating to our vaunted 
 enlightenment than a burial ordinance of the type 
 I refer to. It seems clear that many of our rites 
 and celebrations differ only in degree from those 
 125 
 
belonging to stages of civilization which we de- 
 spise. Sartor resartus! Shorn of our conven- 
 tional outer garb, what are we ? That is the ques- 
 tion we should put to ourselves. Let us by all 
 means do what we like and enjoy ourselves in any 
 of the conventional ways we please ; but let us not 
 arrogate to ourselves the pride of superiority be- 
 cause our habits of convention differ a little from 
 those of other classes and races. 
 
 Talking of the weather recalls to my mind that 
 some years ago by the conditions of a postal con- 
 tract service with a great government, which shall 
 be nameless, the contractor was held responsible 
 for delays caused not only by failures or break- 
 downs of machinery and matters of possible hu- 
 man control, but also for stress of weather and 
 dense fogs, in which all locomotion became im- 
 possible. Of course, for adequate payment the 
 risk of penalties arising from even uncontrollable 
 causes might have been submitted to. But 
 though the remuneration was less than bare the 
 government remained immovable on the matter 
 of human responsibility for the weather and " acts 
 of God," and the obnoxious clause was not ex- 
 126 
 
punged until it was formally represented that 
 however flattering it might be to the contractors 
 that the powers of the Almighty should be attrib- 
 uted to them, they must humbly decline to as- 
 sume the responsibility of exercising such exalted 
 functions. This argument actually severed a 
 strand of official red tape ; but who of us, in any 
 walk of life, is there who is not bound up in the 
 red tape of convention? 
 
 What, however, has red tape to do with garden- 
 ing? To which question I may answer a great 
 deal ; since horticulture has at all times been and 
 is now still to a great extent the slave of fashion 
 and convention. 
 
 Returning to my own little gardening pursuits, 
 I have acquired a number of plants, tubers, and 
 roots of the Flame Nasturtium, Tropoeolum 
 speciosum, which I am anxious to grow. The form 
 in which it was supplied to me varied. One nurs- 
 eryman sent me growing plants in pots, another 
 fine, healthy-looking tubers as large as a small 
 hen's egg, and a third supplied a lot of long, thin, 
 white roots. The instructions for planting which 
 I have read are still more numerous and diverse. 
 127 
 
The first of these is interesting, so I transcribe it 
 for the benefit of my readers : 
 
 "T. speciosum (Flame Nasturtium). 
 
 " A Chilian climber. 
 
 " Flowers June to September- October. 
 
 " Best in light, deep loam, with the addition of 
 peat, leaf soil, and sand. In summer a mulching 
 of well-rotted manure is beneficial. Dislikes a 
 scorching hot position should be planted in a 
 somewhat shaded place where there is plenty of 
 moisture in the air, such as against bushes or 
 hedges, with a west or northern aspect. Plant 
 tubers in April or May plants may be allowed to 
 take care of themselves. If coddled too much are 
 likely to be a failure, but so long as the soil is well 
 drained and fairly good and the position partially 
 shaded and not too cold, the plants will sooner or 
 later establish themselves. 
 
 " In the south it is almost impossible to estab- 
 lish it exposed to the full rays of the sun. A 
 quantity of roots were placed in holes at the foot 
 of a spreading young yew-tree, the soil not being 
 disturbed farther than was necessary for covering 
 the roots. For a couple of years these did 
 128 
 
nothing, but in the third year a vivid splash of 
 vermilion on one of the branches of the yew 
 showed that the plants were thriving, and they 
 have since garlanded the dark foliage of the yew 
 with an opulence of color that yearly increases 
 in extent. 
 
 " Meanwhile, the plants which had been put in 
 carefully selected situations and well looked after, 
 perished." 
 
 My first plants were put in nearly two years 
 ago in accordance with these directions and have 
 since not been disturbed. I shall possess my soul 
 in patience for another year and then look out 
 anxiously for a vivid splash on the yew and bushes 
 under which the plants were placed. 
 
 With the tubers and roots I tried to follow the 
 directions given by Mrs. Earle, who, quoting a 
 friend, says that holes should be prepared quite 
 four feet deep and filled with leaf mold and light 
 earth. The roots, we are then told, are to be 
 planted one foot below the surface, so that they 
 shall have two feet of loose soil to work down 
 into. 
 
 Now there is something wrong here, and the 
 9 129 
 
arithmetic is clearly at fault. I can not follow the 
 directions in their entirety, for if I make a hole 
 four feet deep and leave the roots two feet of loose 
 soil to work down into they will be two feet under 
 the surface instead of one; and if I plant them 
 one foot under the surface they will have three 
 feet of loose earth under them instead of two. 
 Perhaps allowance is made in the calculation for 
 the roots being a foot long, which mine are not, 
 and the tubers are only about two inches. I there- 
 fore solved the problem, especially as labor is a 
 consideration with me, by making the holes three 
 feet deep and placing the tubers so that they have 
 one foot of soil above them and two beneath. 
 They have been located in various likely shady 
 spots, so I hope some of them will thrive. 
 
 The other day I sawed a slice off one of my 
 blocks of the fallen elm branch, to make a rustic 
 table-top, and I had the curiosity to count the 
 rings in the cross-section. There were ninety- 
 four of them, besides a homogeneous core of about 
 an inch diameter in the center. As each ring 
 must signify a year's growth, I suppose, there- 
 fore, the branch must be about a hundred years 
 130 
 
old and the tree possibly older. I wonder if there 
 are in any parts of our bodies some similar indi- 
 cations of progressive age. The teeth, I am 
 afraid, are very unreliable, nor do we go on grow- 
 ing all our life in superimposed layers, and if we 
 did the better half of humanity would not ex- 
 hibit cross-sections to general inspection, but 
 would doubtless polish and furbish the outer layer 
 to make it look fresh and young. 
 
 It has been foretold that in a certain number 
 of generations, how many I do not know, the hu- 
 man race will have no hair and no teeth, both be- 
 coming atrophied from disuse and eventually, 
 from hidden rudiments, like the coccyx, the ap- 
 pendix, and the hairy points to our ears, vanish- 
 ing altogether. 
 
 If these modifications take place, which is quite 
 possible, granted the unlimited time which evolu- 
 tionary changes demand, and the human teeth re- 
 tire before the invasion of chemical nourishment 
 without waste, I think the probability has been 
 lost sight of that the elaborate digestive and other 
 organs designed for the assimilation of large 
 masses of miscellaneous and chemically unpre- 
 
pared food, must fall into disuse and vanish also. 
 The necessary corollary will be a wasp-like waist 
 and the gradual but certain ruin of the corsetiere. 
 Those who follow this calling or should I say, 
 pursue this industry? if they are wise and far- 
 seeing, will be careful to bring up their remote 
 posterity to some other trade. This prudent ad- 
 vice is offered gratis and in all friendliness to a 
 deserving and, I believe, frequently unremuner- 
 ated class of industrious artistes. 
 
 132 
 
Draussen auf griiner Au 
 Bliihen viel Blumchen blau 
 Bliihen Vergissmeinnicht 
 Bis man sie bricht; 
 Aber dann welken sie, 
 Nur meine Liebe nie ; 
 Wenn auch das Herze bricht 
 Sie Welket nicht. 
 
 Becker. 
 
 Outside there, fresh as dew, 
 Blooms many a flower blue, 
 Blooms the forget-me-not 
 Till plucked. Its lot 
 Then is to fade and die. 
 With love it can not vie. 
 E'en though all life is gone, 
 Love still lives on. 
 
 133 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 BIRDS AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 HE dear little turquoise forget-me- 
 nots have gone, at least all those 
 that were planted together in a large 
 round bed, to make room for gerani- 
 ums. They have been bedded away in snug 
 rows to rest through the summer heat till they are 
 ready to be planted out again in more conspicuous 
 positions. A few of their brethren who inhabit 
 shady corners have been left undisturbed, whilst 
 their cousins, the water forget-me-nots, who live 
 on the margin of " The Drain," are only just be- 
 ginning to don their fine garments for the season 
 and have not begun to flower yet. And when they 
 do, how beautiful they are, and how they appeal 
 to pleasant associations and reminiscences ! The 
 flower is so unpretentious and yet of such a per- 
 fect and pure color that it can not be overlooked 
 or passed by unnoticed. 
 
 135 
 
The turquoise, like the forget-me-nots, is prized 
 also for the same color, and the stone is supposed 
 to fade, like the flower. The turquoise that fades, 
 however, is the Egyptian variety, which is said to 
 be composed of petrified bone. The true tur- 
 quoise from Persia and Tibet, which is a differ- 
 ent mineral, does not lose its color or become 
 paler. 
 
 Another attractive little flower which consoles 
 me for the loss of the bed of forget-me-nots is the 
 speedwell, or bird's-eye, as it is called in these 
 parts. In the paddock and along a bank at the 
 roadside not far from my gate there are large 
 patches and masses densely packed with its vivid 
 azure flowers, each one certainly looking very 
 much like a pure blue eye. 
 
 The white hawthorn has only just saved its 
 reputation and its flowering before May is out, 
 and the lilacs and Dutch honeysuckles are cov- 
 ered with sweet-scented bloom-masses. Another 
 shrub which fills the air with its perfume is the 
 pale yellow azalea, of which there are a number 
 of fine large old bushes in the garden. Those in 
 the more exposed positions, however, are in poor- 
 136 
 
anD 
 
 er condition than usual, many of the most ad- 
 vanced flower-buds having been injured by the 
 late frosts. Some of the earlier rhododendrons 
 are also in flower; but the guelder-rose is very 
 late, fully a month behind last year. 
 
 The country is beautiful in its luxuriant fresh 
 green clothing, and even the vegetation at the 
 roadside is not tarnished by dust. Many of the 
 meadows are bright golden sheets of buttercups, 
 and the abundant rain has made the f ool's-parsley 
 run riot. I find it lasts in water and looks well if 
 large bunches are grouped together in a good- 
 sized vase or jar. In a shady corner of the pad- 
 dock the plants are of enormous size and density 
 and are fully four feet high. 
 
 Besides the forget-me-nots, the polyanthus, and 
 most of the pansies, as space is deficient, have 
 been put away; and the latter, still in vigorous 
 growth owing to the generous moisture of the 
 soil, continue flowering in a profusion of rich 
 and gay colors. These rows of plants, which do 
 not show a sign of somnolence, remind me of live- 
 ly children who have been put into bed too early 
 and can not go to sleep. 
 
 137 
 
The birds all seem very happy; but I expect 
 they do not realize that there will not be any 
 cherries for them. They usually have such an 
 unlimited supply from several large trees that I 
 fear it will be a bitter disappointment when they 
 find no fruit, almost all the blossoms having "gone 
 blind," owing to the cold weather during the first 
 half of the month. The ground is now thickly 
 strewn with the flower-stalks. It seems very hard 
 that our beautiful songsters should have to sing 
 in vain and be deprived of their most cherished 
 " price of the orchestra." 
 
 The starlings usually build in a greenhouse 
 chimney and in the hollow of a very old mulberry 
 stem. This year they have raised a brood in an old 
 hothouse boiler-pipe, three of which pipes form a 
 very stalwart tripod some eight or nine feet above 
 the ground, and upon which I am growing three 
 strong climbing roses. These are to be trained 
 up the center through a triangle at the top, 
 whence they can fall down and rampage at their 
 own sweet will without fear of breaking down 
 their support. It is not a sightly object at present 
 and invariably calls forth inquiry and comment 
 
 138 
 
anti 
 
 from my visitors. As it looks rather like the erec- 
 tion of a pit-head, I call it the " Kent Colliery." 
 My theory is that usually, when climbing roses 
 have attained their best growth on a support on 
 the open lawn, the support gives way and what 
 might be an object of great beauty is spoilt at its 
 best stage of development. My tripod will not 
 collapse or topple over in a gale of wind, even with 
 a ton of rose branches hanging down from it. It 
 is no doubt an eyesore now; but I shall triumph 
 over scoffers when it braves the elements smoth- 
 ered in a heavy cataract of roses. 
 
 But I have wandered away from the starlings. 
 They have also laid eggs and are rearing a brood 
 in a compartment of one of the pigeon-houses. 
 As the pigeons are always fighting among them- 
 selves and turn each other out of these compart- 
 ments, I do not understand how they have come 
 to let such intruders in. But they have, and one 
 of the hostesses takes an occasional turn at sitting 
 on the starling's eggs for her. It is evident, there- 
 fore, that my pigeons, in spite of domestic differ- 
 ences and brawls, are hospitable to strangers, like 
 many human beings. 
 
 139 
 
A great many new-fledged linnets are leaving 
 their nests in the shrubs and there seem to be 
 more young robins about since the cat has dis- 
 appeared. The wood-pigeon coos softly and the 
 song of the blackbird and the thrush cause the 
 surrounding atmosphere to vibrate in soothing 
 pulsations. The dainty little wagtail darts about 
 the lawn impelled by the rapid running motion 
 of his little feet, and on the fields he follows the 
 harrow in the same perky, fascinating way. 
 
 I wonder if these birds suffer as we do from 
 discontent, that human attribute which often 
 brings upon its agent so much unrest and misery, 
 though in reality it is the fount from which all ad- 
 vancement and progress springs? Discontent is 
 generally condemned, and yet without it the 
 mainspring by which we always move onward 
 would be wanting. There would be no improve- 
 ment or reform if we were all content to remain 
 as we are and were satisfied with our surround- 
 ings, devoid of ambition. The restless dissatis- 
 faction and desire for change are implanted in us 
 to work our own advancement ; and the contented 
 spirit, however much we may admire and envy 
 140 
 
ana 
 
 it the peace and resignation it brings, is not a 
 product of the selection of the fittest to lead us 
 on to the goal of our destiny. 
 
 All the same, there is little fortitude or heroism 
 in taking every opportunity to air one's discon- 
 tent openly when no special object of direct ad- 
 vancement can be served thereby, especially when 
 that discontent is less with one's self than with 
 the circumstances in which one lives, caused, per- 
 haps, or contributed to, by one's own short-sight- 
 edness, selfishness, and folly. The discontent of 
 those whose objects in life are confined to their 
 own insatiable craving for pleasure outside their 
 natural surroundings is not the useful and valu- 
 able quality I speak of and must not be con- 
 founded with it. 
 
 It seems easy to say that the circumstances sur- 
 rounding us may be brought about by our own 
 folly, and so they may. But what is folly, and 
 what is wisdom, absolute? Is there any real 
 standard, not conditional or conventional, by 
 means of which wisdom and folly can be meas- 
 ured, defined, and separated from one another? 
 
 Adherence to what is usually called principle 
 141 
 
can not always be wisdom, for circumstances may 
 be found in which the rigid exercise of any given 
 principle may be wrong, and merely the lesser of 
 two evils. This being the case, it is clear the wise 
 course is not always the " right " course, and here 
 we are face to face with the important question: 
 What is right and what is wrong? which I do not 
 propose to attempt to answer, at all events for the 
 present. 
 
 There can be no doubt, at least, that ethics and 
 morality are matters of convenience, and that the 
 entire codes of manners, morals, and laws have 
 been evolved on a utilitarian basis. The manners, 
 morals, and laws of human communities often 
 differ very widely from one another, thus adding 
 proof to their local conventional origin and 
 growth. Laws are of course merely the crystalli- 
 zation of convenient and conventional methods 
 which have by gradual progress been arrived at 
 for the mutual protection of individuals and com- 
 munities. If the rights of person and property 
 were violable with impunity neither the one nor 
 the other would be safe from destruction or free 
 to work its own advancement. And if the mar- 
 142 
 
anti 
 
 riage laws were relaxed the proper care and 
 bringing up of the rising generation would at 
 once be imperiled. 
 
 Much might be said on this important subject, 
 but I am not going to allow my remarks to de- 
 velop into a lengthy essay here. 
 
 An example of positive and absolute evil and 
 immorality occurs to me, and there may be many 
 others. It is the trade-unions, as many of them 
 are administered at present, by whose regulations 
 the standard of capacity is deliberately leveled 
 down to the lowest grade instead of being im- 
 pelled toward the highest excellence. Could any 
 human suicidal organization work on lines less 
 moral and less in accord with the priceless impulse 
 of nature toward advancement by selection of the 
 highest and the fittest? 
 
 143 
 
The year of the rose is brief; 
 From the first blade blown to the sheaf, 
 From the thin green leaf to the gold, 
 It has time to be sweet and grow old, 
 To triumph and leave not a leaf. . . . 
 Swinburne. 
 
 10 145 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 ROSES AND PHILOLOGY 
 
 F not with sunshine from the central 
 and chief orb of our solar system, 
 June came in with the beneficent 
 sunshine of peace after a painful and 
 protracted war, and I do not doubt that the whole 
 nation glowed as I did with the satisfaction of re- 
 lief, the removal of a heavy oppressive cloud, and 
 the prospect of reconciliation with a people with 
 whom we had for so long been battling at such 
 terrible loss and suffering on both sides. 
 
 On the first of June I found a " May beetle," as 
 the Germans call it, a cockchafer, in the gar- 
 den, an insect I had not seen for many years. I 
 had, however, very vivid recollections of it from a 
 plague of cockchafers I had witnessed in Ger- 
 many somewhere about the year 1860. On that 
 occasion such countless numbers appeared that 
 the entire district was literally covered with them, 
 147 
 
and I remember going out into the woods and see- 
 ing the foliage densely packed with them, in many 
 cases two or three deep, so that the branches of 
 the trees were bent down and also frequently 
 broken by their weight. The little street boys 
 used to eat the beetles. 
 
 I once also witnessed, what I believe is an un- 
 common occurrence, a storm of crickets. They 
 were suddenly blown, like a squall, into the town 
 in Ecuador, where I was residing, in dense masses 
 and heaped against the bases of the walls like hail- 
 drifts. They were carried into verandas and 
 open doors and windows ; and the houses, where 
 they did considerable damage, were not entirely 
 free from them for a month or more afterward. 
 Walking in the streets, for some hours after the 
 downpour, it was impossible to avoid scrunching 
 crickets at every step. 
 
 During the early part of the month the paddock 
 looked very pretty with its patches of small blue- 
 bells, purple orchids, speedwell, and a bright little 
 vetch. I sowed some cowslip seed in the early 
 spring and harebell the year before, but neither 
 have come up. The latter graceful little flower I 
 148 
 
and 
 
 have strewn the seed of in various positions, but 
 without success. There is none of it in the neigh- 
 borhood and apparently it does not find this lo- 
 cality congenial. 
 
 Notwithstanding the want of sun until the lat- 
 ter half of the month, the shrubberies maintained 
 a good appearance. The yellow azaleas, which 
 had had many of their buds destroyed by the late 
 frosts, seemed to get a new lease of life and 
 bloomed profusely, whilst the foliage shrubs were 
 further set off by the unusually excellent flower- 
 ing of the guelder-rose and rhododendrons of 
 varied hue white, pale lilac, mauve, scarlet, and 
 a deep purple mauve, which recalled to my mind 
 the rich, full tone of the magnificent Bougainvillea 
 spectabilis when in all the glory of its proper ele- 
 ment. 
 
 The roses are late this year, a Gloire de Dijon 
 on the south wall of the house being the first. 
 One day I counted on it one hundred and eighteen 
 open and half-open flowers, apart from many more 
 buds to follow. 
 
 Reine Marie Henriette on the " Kent Colliery " 
 has had some flowers of exquisite form and color, 
 149 
 
dSattien 
 
 but not many of them, owing to its extreme youth. 
 It is a most beautiful rose. Others of surpassing 
 beauty which have been flowering are Caroline 
 Testout and White Lady. But among roses one 
 is lost, and for my own part I really do not know 
 whether I prefer these to others, such as Captain 
 Christy, La France, Grace Darling, Marie van 
 Houtte, Margaret Dickson, Kaiserin Augusta, 
 Victoria L'Ideal, Marechal Niel, and many more 
 of equally faultless tint and form. Among the 
 dark ones, too, can such rich beauty as Reynold's 
 Hole and La Rosiere, alias Prince Camille de 
 Rohan, be surpassed? They are all flowering, 
 along with many others, and each one, as one con- 
 templates it, seems the best. 
 
 The Spanish iris have been very fine, taller, and 
 bearing much larger flowers than usual. 
 
 All the summer flowers are coming on rapidly 
 with the succession of plentiful rain and generous 
 sunshine they have had and their vigorous growth 
 has filled the beds to repletion. A flower I rather 
 regret not having sown is Calliopsis, or Coreopsis. 
 I do not know the derivation of these two names, 
 but I take them to be equivalents and one a cor- 
 150 
 
ana 
 
 ruption of the other, forming an example of the 
 interchangeable 1 and r which occurs so frequent- 
 ly in many languages. A Chinaman always pro- 
 nounces an r like an 1, and Isaac Taylor in his in- 
 teresting work, The Alphabet, tells us that the 
 Japanese r answers to the Chinese 1 and its sign 
 has the same origin ; that in Egyptian, as in some 
 other languages, no clear distinction existed be- 
 tween r and 1, and that the primitive Semitic al- 
 phabet probably only possessed one sign for both. 
 In the edicts of Asoka the letters are inter- 
 changed, " raja " in some copies being written 
 " laja." In various countries, both east and west, 
 I have noticed that 1 and n are also frequently in- 
 terchanged, and I have sometimes heard such a 
 well-known name as Lucknow pronounced Nuck- 
 low. 
 
 These facts once served as text for the follow- 
 ing dedication : 
 
 TO LOLA ON HER BIRTHDAY. 
 
 (A philological analysis) 
 
 Interchangeable letters philologists say 
 Occur in most languages: therefore they may 
 Not only be looked for in words, but as well 
 In names, where they often get mixed up pell-mell. 
 
The r and the 1, and the 1 and the n 
 We know often stand for each other; so then, 
 By the simplest of reasoning, who dare so bar 
 The right to use v for an 1 or an r. 
 
 If consonants thus can be handled so free, 
 
 The rule for the vowels sure the same one must be. 
 
 We may therefore prohibit all persons to say 
 
 We are wrong when we write down an e for an a. 
 
 Our principles settled, we'll now demonstrate 
 And in order our story at once to narrate, 
 We'll select a sweet name an Italian would know 
 Is composed of two articles la, also lo. 
 
 The masculine one perhaps first placed should be, 
 But philology is not politeness, you see, 
 And the name of the subject of this dissertation 
 It is clear can not end with a male termination. 
 
 Two sexes are therefore established and then, 
 Being close to each other, like women and men, 
 They, instead of endeav'ring to cut the connection 
 Unite into monosyllabic affection. 
 
 The student who's earnest and follows all this 
 The drift of the argument never can miss ; 
 For plainer nowhere can be shown than above, 
 By reason and logic, that Lola is love. 
 
 The warm weather makes one feel very slack 
 and one can imagine the delight of realizing the 
 152 
 
ant) 
 
 Italian " dolce far niente." I have read that there 
 is a delicious Spanish proverb, which is a good 
 equivalent, to the effect that The ideal of life is 
 never to work between meals. I have not come 
 across or heard the original, which I suppose 
 would run somewhat as follows: El ideal de la 
 vida es de nunca trabajar entre comidas. Both 
 these aphorisms are such as the idle or languid 
 may cherish as refreshments in the dog-days. 
 
 While on the subject of maxims, the German 
 one which I realize in obverse and reverse, almost 
 daily, more than any other, is Goethe's dictum: 
 " Vor den Wissenden sich stellen, sicher ist's in 
 alien Fallen," which, however, I find it rather 
 difficult to render literally into English. The 
 meaning of it is : " With wisdom there can be no 
 misunderstanding." One certainly realizes con- 
 stantly that with stupidity there can be, and that 
 misunderstandings constantly arise from lack of 
 knowledge, most discords being due to ignorance 
 on one side or the other. Where full knowledge 
 and complete wisdom exists there can be no room 
 for misconception or misjudgment, and even a 
 disagreement becomes merely an agreement to 
 153 
 
differ. In dealing with or representing matters 
 to the wise, one may at all events always feel safe ; 
 whilst in treating with ignorance, both matter 
 and motive are likely to be misunderstood. 
 " Tout savoir ; c'est tout pardonner." 
 
 But the French saying I like best and which 
 recurs to my mind with the greatest force and 
 frequency is: "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse 
 pouvait!" How often does one not see this forci- 
 bly illustrated ! And in one's maturer years how 
 often is it not brought home to one to regret that 
 the power no longer exists for the performance 
 of what once might perhaps easily have been 
 achieved had only the requisite knowledge or 
 discernment not been lacking! 
 
 154 
 
The light speaks wide and loud 
 From deeps blown clean of cloud 
 As though day's heart were proud 
 And heaven's were glad. . . . 
 
 Swinburne. 
 
 155 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 MIDSUMMER ROSES 
 
 'N July the scene changes again and the 
 colors of the garden kaleidoscope 
 have rearranged themselves. In- 
 stead of with the blooms of rhodo- 
 dendron, azalea, and guelder-rose, the shrub- 
 beries are now decked with tall foxgloves, del- 
 phiniums, and an occasional lily in amongst the 
 bushes, whilst the beds are radiant with old- 
 fashioned sweet-williams, Canterbury bells, cam- 
 panulas, and snapdragons, together with early 
 gladioli, phlox, petunias, and verbenas. All the 
 flowers have been extraordinarily large this year 
 and have shown an unusual development. The 
 Canterbury bells have been veritable good-sized 
 bushes and the sweet-williams almost like groups 
 of miniature trees with great, thick, strong stems. 
 The verbenas are growing with unwonted lux- 
 uriance and the carnations have masses of flowers 
 upon them. 
 
 157 
 
In place of the Gloire de Dijon and the Dutch 
 honeysuckle on the house, the rich, warm colors 
 of the crimson rambler and the Clematis Jack- 
 manni are substituted in glorious profusion. I 
 read the other day that the crimson rambler 
 " does not thrive on a south wall." It would, 
 however, be hard to find one growing more vig- 
 orously or flowering more profusely than the one 
 growing on the south wall of this house. Since 
 it has been tended and manured two years ago it 
 has each summer thrown up fresh shoots ten feet 
 long and has been wreathed in dense masses .of 
 blossoms. 
 
 The shrubberies really owe most of their bright- 
 ness, however, to their being studded with roses 
 growing between the shrubs and through them. 
 Parts of the garden are almost dominated by this 
 rose, the red damask (Gallica) I take it to be, 
 and in some beds the red and white striped one, 
 Rosa Mundi (f). The former seems almost inde- 
 structible. It had virtually taken possession of 
 portions of the shrubberies and was forcing such 
 hardy shrubs as aucubas, berberis, and other 
 things out of existence. I had it pulled up and 
 
 158 
 
rooted out wholesale where it was too strong; 
 but this seems to have done it no harm and it has 
 sprung up again everywhere in fresher vigor than 
 before. A lot of it has been planted among laurels 
 in a newer shrubbery, where it seems to have 
 established itself well. It is a most beautiful 
 object and goes on adorning the somber shrubs 
 with its brilliant red blooms, which continue to 
 succeed one another longer than any other rose in , 
 the garden, being usually continuously covered 
 with flowers the whole of July and part of August. 
 At the end of January many of the roses got 
 their leaves entirely shriveled up, as if they had 
 been burnt, from a northeast gale, which lasted 
 three days and nights, and I felt glad I had pro- 
 tected the necks of the recently planted ones, 
 which might otherwise have succumbed. As it 
 turned out, I only lost one, a Duchesse de Caylus, 
 and all the rest have flourished and flowered well. 
 A Marechal Niel on a south porch was in bud in 
 April. In addition to those already mentioned, I 
 must especially also record the beauty of Maman 
 Cochet, Moire, Baroness Rothschild, Duchess of 
 Albany, and Duke of Wellington. 
 159 
 
d&attien 
 
 Where paths cross at right angles in the kitch- 
 en-garden I have erected two quadruple sets of 
 arches. One has at its four corners climbing 
 Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Perle des Jardins, 
 Marechal Niel, and Beaute Lyonnaise, and the 
 other climbing La France, Captain Christy, Mrs. 
 W. J. Grant, and Waltham Climber. On another 
 single arch I have planted Gruss an Teplitz and 
 Marguerite Appert. They have all flowered and 
 next year I hope I will make a good show. Perle 
 des Jardins I thought particularly beautiful and a 
 serious competitor with the Marechal, whose 
 flower it resembles. 
 
 At the end of the month the roses have finished 
 flowering; but a second crop of Canterbury bells 
 is coming on, seeing which I went patiently 
 through the long job of snipping off all the dead 
 flowers of the first crop, one by one. 
 
 Three rows of sweet-peas I had cut down with 
 shears to about half their height, trimming in also 
 the sides, and they are now responding to the 
 treatment with a fresh crop of flowers. The 
 carnations have been most prolific, too, and the 
 Antirrhinums equally so. 
 
 160 
 
It Served as a Cradle for so many Attractive Objects. 
 
A water-hen has built a nest and filled it with 
 eggs up in an ivy-clad tree-trunk overhanging 
 " The Drain," and farther up, just above my 
 boundary, two broods of wild duck are swim- 
 ming about, adding further charm to this despised 
 bit of water. 
 
 Two years ago I planted one of the beauti- 
 ful American brambles in various different posi- 
 tions. All the plants withered and disappeared 
 long since; but lately two of them have sprung 
 up again in the moister sites chosen on the margin 
 of the brook, as I think I must now in common 
 justice call " The Drain," since it serves as a 
 cradle for so many attractive objects. 
 
 It is thus that we often eventually discover 
 good in an unattractive and evil guise, which 
 causes the reflection as to whether evil must not 
 also have its uses in working toward the universal 
 goal to which all things tend and unconsciously 
 strive. Discontent is the source from which 
 progress springs, and may not perhaps other bad 
 qualities or attributes also have their uses ? May 
 it not be, if we had only eyes to see and brains to 
 discern clearly, that in envy, hatred, malice, and 
 11 161 
 
all uncharitableness is enclosed some kernel which 
 nurtures another germ of advancement? May 
 not envy be the outcome of emulation and a de- 
 sire for improvement, hatred of an aversion to 
 evil, malice of a somewhat too pronounced faculty 
 to assail the unsympathetic and discordant? And 
 may not uncharitableness arise from an over- 
 strong sense of self-preservation? 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of adversity," and profit- 
 able perhaps also is the use of evil. There are 
 many puzzles in life and this is one of them, 
 though some day we shall no doubt unravel the 
 web which at present obscures the precise manner 
 in which certain evils work for good and perform 
 a necessary function in " the great scheme." Of 
 course it is clear enough that some evils, that is 
 to say, violations of the laws of nature, bring 
 their own direct consequences, destroying the 
 individual for the benefit of the community, not 
 only by the removal of an adverse and retarding 
 influence, but also by a swifter redistribution of 
 matter and force for vitalizing absorption into 
 the more regular units of nature who do not in- 
 fringe its laws or impede its forward march. 
 162 
 
Another puzzle to me of a different kind has 
 always been, not how an apple is got into a dump- 
 ling, but how it is we are still taught that 
 Pharaoh's host was drowned in the Red Sea in- 
 stead of Lake Serbonis. We know, of course, 
 that the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Menephtah II, 
 did not perish himself with his host, as his body 
 was found a few years ago at Dayr el Bahri, and 
 may still be seen in Egypt in an excellent state of 
 preservation. Milton, when he wrote Paradise 
 Lost, about 1665, evidently knew where the 
 Egyptian army must have been engulfed, for he 
 refers to 
 
 A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 
 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Cassius old, 
 Where armies whole have sunk. . . . 
 
 Of course he may have had in mind the de- 
 struction of the invading Persian army of Artax- 
 erxes ; but why is it that the mistranslation of the 
 name Yam Souf into the Red Sea, instead of into 
 its real meaning the Sea of Weeds, or Reeds, 
 by which name Lake Serbonis was known was 
 not set right in the revised translation of the 
 Bible in 1884, ten years after Brugsch had pub- 
 
 163 
 
lished his lucid exposition on the subject? The 
 French Bible falls into our error ; but the German, 
 I see, renders Yam Souf correctly into Schilfmeer. 
 I commend to my readers the interesting study 
 of Brugsch's Discourse on The Exodus and the 
 Monuments, in intervals of repose snatched from 
 gardening operations. 
 
 164 
 
I am bored in the morning, bored in the 
 afternoon, and bored in the evening. 
 
 Modern Play. 
 
 165 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 GARDENS AND LIFE 
 
 HE most noticeable flowers I have in 
 August are the asters, geraniums, 
 petunias, stocks, carnations, and 
 phloxes. The antirrhinums seem to 
 be always present and give almost perpetual color 
 to the beds. I have been striving for some time 
 past to weed out the pale, washed-out colors, pre- 
 serving only the rich ones with a few white and 
 clean yellows* The scarlet gladioli and some of 
 the other autumn-flowering ones have also added 
 materially to the brightness. The Japanese anem- 
 ones are announcing the approaching end of sum- 
 mer by beginning to flower very early. 
 
 The phloxes are very large and bountiful and 
 the carnations have been bearing masses of flow- 
 er-spikes of unusual size right up to the end of 
 the month. There has been little sun and much 
 moisture, so that watering has never been neces- 
 
 167 
 
sary. The absence of sunlight and warmth has 
 kept back the Canterbury bells and their second 
 crop of flowers has not come out till nearly the 
 end of the month, when it has been profuse, 
 though the individual flowers have been small. 
 The roses are just commencing to awake into 
 bloom again, after their summer sleep. 
 
 My hollyhocks from seed, sown this year, have 
 for the most part done well. They have grown 
 to a full height and flowered, with the exception 
 of some planted in a bed near a walnut-tree. 
 These at first throve wonderfully well and looked 
 strong and healthy till they were about two feet 
 high, when they began to dwindle and finally al- 
 most died away altogether, whilst their fellows 
 continued to flourish in a more congenial locality. 
 
 One of my Lilium Giganteum blossomed its first 
 year, sending up a strong stalk about five feet 
 high, crowned with light, beautiful white trum- 
 pets lined inside with delicate pale purple. I hope 
 they will all do better next year. 
 
 One of the Tropceolums which I was waiting 
 for has flowered already. It is one of the large 
 tubers previously referred to, and turns out to be, 
 168 
 
ana Life 
 
 not speciosum, which I ordered and wanted, but 
 tuberosum, which I care for much less. I have a 
 great mind to name the person who sold it me 
 and took advantage of my ignorance. 
 
 The moles have been terribly active, worse than 
 I have known them before, and there is hardly a 
 patch in the garden they have not furrowed. A 
 number of them have been caught ; but they have 
 damaged all the lawns and have completely spoilt 
 several flower-beds. The season seems to have 
 been particularly favorable to them, and the va- 
 riety of drawbacks the gardener has to contend 
 with never seems to end, and provides constant 
 occupation. 
 
 This is, however, an age of variety entertain- 
 ment, in which the brains of most people, as 
 Max Nordau so graphically points out, are dis- 
 tracted sorely from staple thought and concen- 
 tration. The growing competition for wealth, 
 luxury, and increased comfort has reached an un- 
 wholesome stage of development, and sooner or 
 later I hope some reaction toward a simpler, 
 staider life will set in. At present the turmoil of 
 the race for supremacy, both individual and na- 
 
 169 
 
tional, is most unsettling, and the human mind 
 has but little repose for quiet contemplation, in- 
 trospection, and growth in grace. That a garden 
 is no doubt itself a variety entertainment I will 
 not attempt to deny ; it is, however, a healthy and 
 calming one, moles notwithstanding. But many 
 people seemed discontented unless life generally 
 presents itself to them as a perpetual variety en- 
 tertainment, and have every appearance of con- 
 sidering it hardly worth living immediately it 
 ceases to be one. The lack of repose, like adver- 
 tisement, is the bane of the age. 
 
 I always try to discern some true meaning and 
 ultimate moral trend in all social phenomena, and 
 I think that perhaps even variety entertainments 
 may serve some useful purpose, or at least be re- 
 garded as having some important or instructive 
 signification. 
 
 Variety, or variation, as every horticulturist, 
 every student of Darwin, and every breeder of 
 animals knows, is the first necessary step toward 
 selection and improvement of the species, and 
 without it there could be no separation and se- 
 lection, either humanly designed or naturally 
 170 
 
d5attienj3 anti Hife 
 
 cumulative, of the best or fittest, since all would 
 be on a dead level, exactly alike., Imagine 
 what the organic world would be if there had been 
 no variation ! If we go far enough back it would 
 never had have passed the simple protozoic stage. 
 There would be no multiformity of species and so 
 complex an organism as the human animal, or, 
 indeed, any other animal or plant, would never 
 have been developed. As discontent covers the 
 mainspring actuating moral and material im- 
 provement, so does variety or variation from type 
 contain the whole essential condition which ren- 
 ders advancement at all possible. It may thus 
 easily be seen that the craving for variety has 
 a most important biological significance and is 
 perhaps part of the inherent natural craving 
 tendency of all living forms to bring about that 
 first indispensable condition out of which their 
 improvement can take its birth, and without 
 which they must remain doomed to everlasting 
 stagnation. 
 
 And yet, though the advance from protozoon to 
 humanity has been so great, what vast and end- 
 less cumulation of selected variation remains to 
 171 
 
dffar&en 
 
 be achieved in order to bring the sensory instru- 
 ments to an adequate refinement and sensitive- 
 ness to appreciate even phenomena already 
 vaguely known, and to bring the brain into a con- 
 dition of capacity to effectively command the ex- 
 ercise of reason and the subordination of senti- 
 ment and impulse into profitable bounds! And 
 the further almost infinite advancement which is 
 requisite before we can be in a position to appre- 
 ciate and understand " the unknown " is so far off 
 that we must leave it where it is, "behind the 
 veil," among the hidden secrets of nature, which 
 it is profitless for us even to try to speculate upon 
 at present. 
 
 Instead of indulging in the luxury of grief or 
 hopelessness at our deficiencies, let us rather en- 
 deavor, like true philosophers, while fulfilling our 
 individual mission to the best of our lights, to get 
 out of our brief span such enjoyments as come 
 within our reach. Too many of these are missed 
 in the vain pursuit of those amusements which 
 George Cornewall Lewis considered render life 
 intolerable, while most of us are to each other 
 like " ships that pass in the night," and lose, often 
 172 
 
anfc Life 
 
 owing as much to the sway of convention as to 
 the personal reserve, many opportunities of pleas- 
 ant intercourse. Even where at first sight there 
 may be a sufficient germ of mutual sympathy to 
 engender intercommunication, an impassable bar- 
 rier of convention often springs up, defying as- 
 sault and effectually barring the desired coales- 
 cence; and thus we go through our short spell 
 of life dull and alone, where we might be cheer- 
 fully and sociably entertained. 
 
 Although life itself is no doubt eternal, its ac- 
 companiments, phases, or manifestations are 
 ephemeral, and even the best-established popular- 
 ity fades like other tender blossoms. Absence 
 of variety alone seems sufficient to account for 
 this; for the human mind must move onward, 
 steadfast only on the constant change necessary 
 toward progression. Remarkable testimony to 
 the truth of this view is presented by the fact that 
 the public always endeavors to perpetuate for as 
 long a period as possible their appreciation of ex- 
 emplary deeds and conduct by the erection of 
 memorials in stone and metal, which, perishable 
 as they are, are still felt to be more enduring than 
 173 
 
the ever-changing human mind. Feeling that we 
 shall forget, " lest we forget " we are fain to con- 
 trive mnemonics which shall attest the transient 
 feebleness of our own memories and impressions 
 and which shall certify to all beholders that the 
 achievements thus commemorated must quickly 
 wane and disappear in the onward rush. When 
 I see great monuments, tombs, and statues I often 
 wonder whether all their subjects would or do 
 regard them as really complimentary, and not as 
 standing evidence that their memories must other- 
 wise rapidly pass away. 
 
 174 
 
For wonderful indeed are all his works, 
 
 Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all 
 
 Had in remembrance always with delight: 
 
 But what created mind can comprehend 
 
 Their number, or the wisdom infinite 
 
 That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep? 
 
 Milton. 
 
 175 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 SOME OLD-TIME FAVORITES 
 
 WONDER how many thousand miles 
 I have walked round my garden! I 
 suppose, in any case, I must have 
 traveled in it as far in a year as 
 the distance many people traverse in a twelve- 
 month's travel abroad. 
 
 Lately I happened to light upon that most 
 charming of garden books, Voyage autour de 
 mon Jardin, which I had not read for many years, 
 and I have been reading it again with the greatest 
 interest and delight. It is a perfect storehouse of 
 the natural-historic facts of garden life, love, and 
 legend, all set forth in a pleasing and picturesque 
 manner unequaled in any other book that I know 
 of. The spirit of the author is shown sufficiently 
 where, in contemplating the marvelous increase 
 from a tiny seed of evening primrose into count- 
 less and interminable generations of beautiful, 
 12 I 77 
 
sweet-scented plants, he says (I will translate for 
 the benefit of the purely English reader, at the 
 risk of spoiling the original) : " Ah ! I now under- 
 stand the joy vouchsafed to Thine elect which I 
 have sometimes smiled at ironically; that ineffa- 
 ble joy of seeing Thee face to face. I understand 
 it by the delight which I experience in the con- 
 templation of the smallest of Thy works, hidden 
 away in the greensward or secluded in the foliage. 
 O Lord! when I give myself up to the con- 
 templation of nature, it seems to me that Thou art 
 no longer hidden from view but by a veil so 
 transparent that the lightest breath of air 
 would raise it. O Lord! what do those . . . 
 people want who ask for miracles, and those 
 other . . . people who relate them? Is there 
 a single blade of grass which is not a miracle 
 far above the mythologies of all times and of all 
 nations? O Lord! does not the least of Thy 
 insects speak to me more eloquently of Thy power 
 than those ridiculous advocates who have the in- 
 solence to defend Thee as a culprit and to discuss 
 Thee in their folly and vacuity?" 
 Talking on the life of insects and reflecting how 
 178 
 
in their metamorphosis, first as an ugly larva, 
 leading a lowly and obscure life; then as a pupa 
 encased in a shroud and to all appearance lifeless ; 
 and finally emerging from this sarcophagus 
 clothed perhaps in the richest colors, with daz- 
 zling wings which permit the image to raise itself 
 aloft, above the earth where it has hitherto only 
 crawled, our author says : " And this life of ours 
 which we lead on the earth, is it really our per- 
 fect state ? That which we call death, is it really 
 the end of life? Shall we not also have to take 
 wing and soar up toward the sun, above the level 
 of all the miseries and passions and wants of a 
 primary state of existence?" 
 
 Individual existence, as I have said, is but a 
 transitory condition or phase of the eternal life 
 of matter and force, which themselves may both 
 be one, and yet in our weakness and folly we lay 
 great store by our so-called possessions. My fas- 
 cinating author, Alphonse Karr, says : " I remem- 
 bered how small were my wants and desires ; the 
 greatest, the surest, and the most independent 
 of fortunes," and again : " What a strange thing 
 is this possession of which men are so envious! 
 179 
 
When I possessed nothing, I had the forests and 
 the meadows, the sea and the heavens with all 
 their stars ; but ever since I have bought this old 
 house and garden, I have nothing else. Posses- 
 sion is a contract by which we renounce every- 
 thing that is not enclosed within a definite lim- 
 ited boundary. 
 
 "There are moments when I ask myself 
 whether perchance our minds may not be so 
 turned that we call poverty that which is splendor 
 and riches, and opulence that which is misery and 
 nakedness." 
 
 Most of us certainly evince but very little ap- 
 preciation of the wealth and pleasure which might 
 surround us if we only gave ourselves up to their 
 assimilation. We look at most things in an ig- 
 norant, distorted way, and it is difficult to say 
 which of us are sane and reasonable and which 
 are witless and irrational. " Dans toutes les 
 grandes villes, il y a un hopital pour les insenses ; 
 c'est que, en y renfermant quelques pauvres dia- 
 bles sous le nom de fous, on fait croire aux 
 etrangers que ceux qui sont hors de cet hopital 
 ne sont pas." 
 
 180 
 
Among the distinguished residents in the shape 
 of roses who have settled in my garden and 
 adorned it most during the month of September 
 were General Jacqueminot, Captain Hayward, Hein- 
 rich Schultheis, Fisher Holmes, Camile Bernardin, 
 Captain Christy, Tom Wood, Oscar Cordel, Dr. 
 Andry, and the Dukes of Teck and Wellington. 
 They were accompanied by La France and La 
 Rosiere, whilst the following graceful and lovely 
 ladies added further charm to the scene: The 
 Duchesses de Morny and of Albany, Lady Helen 
 Stewart, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, Mrs. John 
 Laing, Marie Baumann, Grace Darling, White Lady, 
 Clara Watson, Caroline Testout, Marie van Houtte, 
 Maman Cochet, and Madame Berard. These all dis- 
 played their beauties satisfactorily in their second 
 bloom of the year, the Tea and Noisette class es- 
 specially producing small but well-shaped flowers. 
 Bouquet D'Or and L'Ideal also contributed a fair 
 amount of blossom. 
 
 My bed of Salpiglossis, which I looked forward 
 
 to with such high expectation, has been a great 
 
 disappointment, and I have derived from it no 
 
 pleasure but that of anticipation, and then I saw 
 
 181 
 
(Bartien 
 
 finally that the season was too far advanced to 
 cherish any further illusions about it. So I had to 
 root out the poor weakly plants, decayed for want 
 of sun and from excess of moisture, and buried 
 my hopes in the earth with the wallflowers which 
 shortly afterward occupied the ground. 
 
 The roses went a long way to assuage my grief 
 over the failure of the Salpiglossis; but even in re- 
 gard to those, I reflected in my bitterness with 
 Grant Allen that after all, for all the poets have 
 said and sung, the rose itself is strictly utilitarian 
 and does not exist purely for our delectation. 
 " You help me, and I will help you," it says to the 
 butterfly; "and it keeps the sternest possible 
 debtor and creditor account with all its benefac- 
 tors." The previous summer, which was hot and 
 dry, when I had not aspired to a whole bed of 
 Salpiglossis, those I had in various positions throve 
 well and bore magnificent blossoms of the most 
 gorgeous colors. 
 
 The sweet-peas, which were sown in October 
 
 and were cut down in July, are still flowering 
 
 freely, and some of those sown in the spring and 
 
 cut down in August promise to go on producing 
 
 182 
 
bloom for a long time yet. I have been much 
 pleased with the excellent results of pruning these 
 beautiful plants. When by plucking the flowers 
 they can no longer be kept in check and form seed- 
 pods freely, I cut them down with shears to about 
 eighteen inches to two feet from the ground, clip- 
 ping off also all the side shoots and pods below 
 that level. With the administration of water and 
 a little liquid manure they then come on again 
 and the new growth flowers almost as vigorously 
 as before. 
 
 The large pink mallow has been quite a feature 
 in the garden and has been covered with masses 
 of flowers. The moist season seems to have 
 suited it, though many of the roses have suffered 
 from mildew. I have applied the remedy so 
 strongly recommended by Dean Hole, namely, 
 soot, and many of the bushes, therefore, are very 
 unsightly and unapproachable. 
 
 The second crop of flowers is still on the Can- 
 terbury bells and a few foxgloves have strug- 
 gled into bloom again, whilst a number of lilies, 
 chiefly auratum and speciosum, show their beauti- 
 ful heads through the shrubs. 
 
 183 
 
Toward the end of the month some of the tall- 
 est dahlias got their heads nipped by the frost. 
 The season has been most unfavorable to them, 
 and owing to lack of heat they developed too late 
 to produce such fine flowers as they have done 
 in more congenial conditions. Still, /. W. Wilkin- 
 son, Night, Exquisite, The Prince of Yellows, and 
 Red Rover gave a good account of themselves. 
 The last of these I have grown two successive 
 years when the conditions of moisture and tem- 
 perature have been entirely different, and it has 
 shown itself to be not only the handsomest but 
 also the hardiest of all the cactus tribe I have had. 
 Its habit is all that can be required of a dahlia. 
 The plant is tall, strong, and loosely constructed, 
 and its magnificent flowers protrude well out of 
 the foliage on long, tough stalks, so that the in- 
 dividual blooms and the plant as a whole are most 
 gorgeous and attractive objects. 
 
 The Delphiniums which were cut down have 
 grown up again and are flowering ; but they evi- 
 dently now begin to realize that spring has not 
 come yet and their colors are but a poor imitation 
 of their real summer dress. 
 184 
 
f aioritejs 
 
 Some of the anemones also seem to have mis- 
 taken the season and have burst into bloom. Al- 
 phonse Karr relates how this flower was orig- 
 inally brought to France from India, more than 
 two centuries ago, by a Monsieur Bachelier, who 
 declined for ten years to distribute it. But his 
 selfish design was frustrated by a magistrate who 
 visited him in his robes of office, which he trailed 
 over some of the precious plants while in seed, 
 carrying away some of the seeds which attached 
 themselves to the wool of his garment. 
 
They who see but one in all the changing manifoldness of this 
 universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth, unto none else, unt- 
 none else. 
 
 187 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 AUTUMNAL FORECAST 
 
 ALWAYS know when a woman has 
 been in my dressing-room by the 
 slope of the mirror, and I also know 
 when a member of the same capti- 
 vating sex has been denuding the garden of flow- 
 ers. In October this would not be so very diffi- 
 cult of accomplishment were it not that in addi- 
 tion to roses there are still quantities of sweet- 
 peas with plenty of buds to follow. 
 
 The Clematis Duchess of Albany has a quantity 
 of flowers on it and has shown a wonderful growth 
 and development ; but in my view this is worthy 
 of a better cause and I can not care for the plant, 
 notwithstanding the glowing terms in which I 
 sometimes see it described in catalogues. I find 
 I am unable to evoke any emotion in its behalf, 
 which perhaps is not surprising when I confess 
 to holding the opinion that the seat of the emo- 
 tions is below the diaphragm, whatever senti- 
 189 
 
mentalists may have asserted to the contrary and 
 however much they may talk about the heart. 
 It is a trite saying that a man's heart is in his 
 stomach ; but there is much more truth in it than 
 those who say it, thinking only of man's " gor- 
 mandize," imagine. Where, I would ask, in a 
 healthy subject, are such emotions as love, affec- 
 tion, disappointment, depression, and sorrow felt? 
 And where is the sensation when the "heart 
 sinks " ? Not above the diaphragm, though ex- 
 citing emotions like anger, hatred, and their fel- 
 lows may accelerate the action of the heart. I 
 am afraid "the heart" is often only a poetic 
 euphemism for the stomach, and this is perhaps 
 most strongly evidenced in the French expression 
 " mal au cceur." 
 
 This dissertation on anatomy reminds me of the 
 boy's answer on being asked to describe the hu- 
 man body: "The human body consists of three 
 parts, the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. The 
 head contains the brain; the thorax contains the 
 heart and the lungs, and the abdomen contains 
 the vowels, of which there are five, a, e, i, o, and 
 u, and sometimes w and y." 
 190 
 
autumnal 
 
 How very nearly accurate is the boy's defini- 
 tion of truth as an attitude of the mind in which 
 we believe " what we know to be untrue," instead 
 of "what we do not know to be true." Where 
 knowledge comes in at the door, faith flies out 
 at the window. 
 
 In many ways, with all our boasted knowledge 
 and ripe experience, we still behave with the sim- 
 plicity of childhood. Why, else, do we pay the 
 doctor when we are ill, instead of when we are 
 well, suspending his fees, as the Chinese are said 
 to do, so long as our health fails? 
 
 A favorite author of mine has it that a sure test 
 of youth is the ability to eat a boggy bun just be- 
 fore a meal, and no doubt it is an excellent proof 
 of juvenility. But a surer and more general test, 
 I notice, is the cocksureness of youth. Doubts 
 only come thick with the ashes, when the beau- 
 tiful fire of hope and confidence is burning low, 
 and when our future looms behind us, when " cold 
 wisdom judges severely all that it can no longer 
 do, calls loss of appetite sobriety, the stagnation 
 of the blood the return of reason, and envious im- 
 potence the disdain of what is futile." I always 
 191 
 
think when I see young people exhibiting failings 
 inherent in youth that they are after all only 
 suffering from one of the temporary maladies 
 which time must cure, and from a malady, more- 
 over, which many of us would like to enjoy. 
 
 Life is a wonderful thing, whether in youth or 
 in age, in its earliest protoplasmic dawn or in the 
 zenith of its development in the lord of the ani- 
 mal kingdom. But what is life and what is the 
 test of life ? The test of life is, I imagine, gener- 
 ally acknowledged to be the capability of response 
 to stimulus. That, however, being the case, Pro- 
 fessor Bose has shown conclusively that living 
 response in all its varied manifestations is ex- 
 hibited by what is known as the inorganic as well 
 as by the organic. He demonstrates in a series 
 of patient and convincing experiments that metals 
 betray evidences of response precisely similar to 
 those which are accepted in the organic as the 
 unfailing testimony of life; that the response in 
 metals may be stimulated and repressed by the 
 administration of exciting or depressing drugs, 
 and that there is no break of continuity in the 
 essential condition of life between the inorganic 
 192 
 
autumnal forecast 
 
 and the organic. Both, under varied conditions, 
 may live or fade or die, and their death may be 
 encompassed by either of the causes, over-excite- 
 ment, over-fatigue, or excessive depression. The 
 world of matter is thus shown not to be swayed 
 by an unknown and mystic force called vitality, 
 but in its stead to be dominated by physical laws 
 which know no change and whose wonderful 
 workings we should make it our duty and interest 
 to try to fathom and understand. What a marvel- 
 ous bridge does this new revelation construct, 
 connecting the inorganic world with the organic, 
 demonstrating further the unity of all nature and 
 the universal, equal, and unfailing operation of its 
 laws ! Would any ordinary person hitherto have 
 thought it possible that a sheet of zinc or copper 
 could feel and respond to stimulating or depress- 
 ing influences, with evidences of excitement, 
 fatigue, and prostration precisely similar to those 
 exhibited by organic matter? The very terms 
 organic and inorganic seem doomed to lose their 
 significance since the sharp dividing line between 
 them has been erased. 
 
 Thus does knowledge, as the result of patient 
 13 193 
 
and persevering research, progress; and where 
 will it eventually lead us to, as our brains become 
 more and more familiar with the simple explana- 
 tion, by the working of universal natural law, of 
 what we now regard as mystery? There is no 
 standing still, and the only repose in nature is 
 that of study, constant, relentless, and everlasting 
 motion onward, calm, unerring, unpitying, and in- 
 exorable. 
 
 Of what significance, in all this stupendous 
 grandeur, can the individual be except to himself 
 as a transitory atom in infinity? 
 
 George Eliot said : " Consequences are unpity- 
 ing," and so they are and must be since they are 
 the inexorable sequence of causes governed by 
 the immutable laws of nature which recognize no 
 possibility of deviation. These same immutable 
 laws are the force which has infallibly brought 
 about and guided all development up to its highest 
 form in the structure and working of the human 
 brain ; and in this brain perhaps the most wonder- 
 ful phase of operations is unconscious cerebration, 
 when the brain works by itself and without any 
 deliberate or active exercise of will or concen- 
 194 
 
autumnal tforecagt 
 
 tration power to stimulate it to perform its 
 functions. 
 
 I find now that it is an extraordinarily reliable 
 calculating machine, and when I entrust prob- 
 lems to it, which I can not solve by the exercise 
 of thought and will at the moment, it works them 
 out and gives me the solution of its own accord, 
 after an interval in which I have not bestowed a 
 moment's conscious thought upon the subject in 
 hand. In youth the difficulty usually seems to be 
 to sustain the effort of will necessary to promote 
 concentration. In mature age neither effort nor 
 concentration is required, as the machine has 
 worn down its bearings and runs smoothly with- 
 out constant watching. This, at least, is my in- 
 dividual experience; but I am quite prepared to 
 admit it may not be universal, or even general, 
 and may vary with every different constitution 
 and temperament. 
 
 I wish I knew what I ought to do to my Lilium 
 Giganteum; whether anything should be done to 
 those that have not flowered, or whether the one 
 which has flowered should be disturbed and the 
 new offsets, which should be found clustered 
 195 
 
round the root, taken up and replanted, as Miss 
 Jekyll seems to indicate. 
 
 The goldenrod has been very showy in the gar- 
 den and is a very handsome and graceful flower, 
 most useful for cutting. 
 
 The azalea foliage is resplendent and many 
 other leaves and berries betray the rapid advance 
 of autumn. 
 
 Having been in Scotland lately, I brought back 
 some ferns and plants of common heather, white 
 heather, and bell heather, which I have had plant- 
 ed with a little of their own native peat in my 
 apology for a rockery, where I hope they may 
 thrive, although the conditions are so different 
 from those by which they have hitherto been sur- 
 rounded. In my host's garden in North Britain 
 everything, except perhaps the roses, seemed to 
 luxuriate in the rich, moist soil which rested upon 
 a substratum of pure peat. How I wished I could 
 transfer a whole trainload of it to my garden! 
 When one jumped upon the garden path the oil 
 vibrated for some distance round over its opulent 
 and elastic bed. 
 
Las hojas del arbol caidas 
 Juguetes del viento son. 
 Las ilusiones perdidas 
 Ay! son hojas desprendidas 
 Del arbol del corazdn." 
 
 The leaves that fall from the trees 
 Gay sport of the winds soon are, 
 And illusions once lost 
 Are the leaves that are tossed 
 From the tree of the heart afar. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 FALLING LEAVES 
 
 'F there were any doubts or illusions 
 about it before, there can be no un- 
 certainty now that autumn is ad- 
 vancing with rapid strides. The gar- 
 den is strewn with dead leaves, all in their turn, 
 and all efforts to keep the lawns tidy are unavail- 
 ing, for ten minutes after they are swept showers 
 of leaves bestrew them again. There are dead 
 leaves and dead leaves, however, some being full 
 of crisp brightness and activity, even though life 
 has gone from them, whilst others look dark, dull, 
 and sodden in their unlovely decay. The large 
 white-heart cherry covers the ground with beauti- 
 ful golden yellow. The beech and the elm set the 
 lawn alive with crisp, dancing fairies, which skip, 
 frisk, and circle as they romp all over its surface. 
 But the ash and the walnut foreshadow dank 
 desolation. Their leaves lie flat, helpless, and 
 199 
 
heavy, heaped upon one another, and irresponsive 
 to the kindly breezes which vainly seek to lure 
 them into a final frolic. The walnut leaves pre- 
 sent a horrible, black, and loathsome spectacle, 
 like death and dissolution in their ugliest form. 
 
 Still, there is, or should be, nothing hopeless 
 in the fall of the leaves, when one reflects that in 
 detaching themselves from the twigs they are 
 only making way for the fresh verdure which is 
 to follow in the spring and the swelling of whose 
 buds really loosens the hold of the old leaves, just 
 as the new generation in the human community 
 forces the older, worn out, and less adaptable 
 members into the background. " Nothing per- 
 ishes in order that it may cease to exist, but so 
 that something else may exist in its stead." 
 
 The mildness of the weather seems to have de- 
 veloped the leaf -buds earlier than usual and these 
 in their turn have forced off the old leaves. In the 
 third week in November there were three nights 
 of frost, up to the time when flowers were still in 
 fair supply in the garden. There were antirrhinum, 
 pinks, dahlias, roses, violets, chrysanthemums, 
 some anemones; and belated pansies and larkspur. 
 200 
 
falling 
 
 The last roses which really opened their petals 
 were picked about the i5th, with the exception of 
 a few " Gloire de Dijon" still to be seen on the 
 south wall of the house, on the last day of the 
 month. 
 
 The cherry and walnut shed their leaves before 
 the mulberry, which did not, in its usual way, lead 
 the van. 
 
 The general mild temperature and moisture of 
 the season have brought up the early Gladioluses, 
 the IxiaSj and the Spanish Irises, all of which I am 
 leaving in the ground to face the winter under 
 the protection of a top-dressing of manure and 
 straw. Some of the laurels and rhododendrons 
 have thrown out new leaves, and the leaf -buds of 
 the beech, lilac, and honeysuckle are much more 
 advanced than they ought to be. The hedges 
 about here are sprouting, and I have come across 
 several patches of hawthorn clothed at the end 
 of November with fresh green as in early spring. 
 They surely must have mistaken the season, like 
 one who wakes up soon after he has fallen asleep, 
 thinking the dawn is approaching. 
 
 Among the flowers of the month I was almost 
 201 
 
forgetting again to enumerate the one I am most 
 proud of, the sweet-peas, which right up to the 
 frost continued their grateful supply of gay and 
 fragrant flowers. I do not count upon being able 
 to keep them so late again, and attribute my suc- 
 cess this year to the constant moisture and ab- 
 sence of strong sun throughout the summer. They 
 have behaved most heroically, for I consider sus- 
 tained effort to be the highest form of heroism. 
 
 How often, however, is real heroism misunder- 
 stood and disregarded, while its less solid rela- 
 tions, dash and pluck, are lauded and rewarded. 
 There is often greater heroism to be found in pri- 
 vate life than on the battle-field. If, as I am 
 afraid sometimes occurs, a brave deed is done with 
 the thought of self-glorification, I do not call it 
 heroic, though it may involve pluck in a high de- 
 gree, for to my mind heroism is above all self-sac- 
 rifice and thought for the welfare of others, and 
 its sublimest height is reached where the sacrifice 
 is made not in the excitement of the moment at 
 the risk of life, but in the calm certainty of death 
 without reward, like Jim Bludso, of whom Colo- 
 nel John Hay said: 
 
 202 
 
falling 
 
 He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing, 
 And went for it thar and then; 
 
 And Christ ain't agoing to be too hard 
 On a man that died for men. 
 
 The truest and greatest heroes in life always 
 seem to me the human omnibus-horses who go 
 about their hard, toiling work day after day, with 
 all the energy and good-will they can command, 
 uncomplaining and unrewarded, even to the last, 
 when they are worn out and the end comes. 
 
 There is said to be a pretty custom in Japan, 
 and I hope it is no fiction, that every year a selec- 
 tion is made in various districts of the girl who 
 has most distinguished herself in the practise of 
 homely virtue and domestic abnegation, and the 
 unsuspecting and modest heroine is then honored 
 and requited. 
 
 In the present time and with us, self-advertise- 
 ment is the prevailing custom, and publicity and 
 notoriety-seeking are the bane of the age. Ad- 
 vertisement pervades all classes and all localities. 
 Neither the private life of the individual nor the 
 sanctity of the domestic hearth are free from it. 
 The most powerful monarch, the most prominent 
 203 
 
statesman, the greatest general, the most eminent 
 man of science or letters are as dependent for their 
 status on advertisement as are soap, pills, beer, 
 or tobacco ; and when the scale of advertisement 
 is reduced, a falling off in popular estimation takes 
 place in all cases alike, with the concomitant loss 
 of influence over the public mind and pocket, 
 an influence which is as necessary to successful 
 statesmanship as to the prosperity of commercial 
 enterprise. There seems to be less and less pri- 
 vate life, no repose, no " recueillement." Society 
 papers invade the sacred seclusion of the home 
 and lay bare to the public gaze every confidential 
 and personal detail of the life, actions, and occu- 
 pations of their all too willing victims, who are 
 portrayed in every conceivable garb. They may 
 be seen in the public prints in their houses, in their 
 gardens, and in their private studies and boudoirs ; 
 they may be seen engaged in the serious avoca- 
 tions of life; on their way to church, performing 
 acts of charity, or at play. They may be seen 
 reading, writing, shooting, bicycling, motoring, 
 riding, or driving; toying with their dogs and 
 horses, posed in graceful attitudes with their 
 204 
 
falling 
 
 children, carrying out scientific demonstrations 
 surrounded by physical or chemical apparatus, or 
 executing some elaborate work of art. 
 
 It may serve a useful purpose to advertise 
 births, deaths, and marriages; but the publica- 
 tion of lists of guests and the presents each one 
 contributes can hardly be regarded as anything 
 but arch-snobbery. 
 
 The only way I can discern to fit the craze for 
 notoriety and advertisement into the economy of 
 nature is to regard the almost fortuitous living of 
 a life of continuous public exposure, less to one- 
 self and more to the community, as a kind of 
 necessary training of the individual to accustom 
 himself to self-sacrifice in order that he may be- 
 come the more fitted to act his part in the promo- 
 tion of the interests and welfare of the race as a 
 whole. 
 
 Having expressed the present state of my senti- 
 ments on advertisement, I will return to the gar- 
 den. There is rather a dry sandy bed, sheltered 
 from the north by a hedge, in which nothing has 
 thriven very well. I have prepared the soil and 
 have planted it with mixed Irises, which, I hope, 
 205 
 
may do well and produce a succession of their 
 lovely flowers. The ones I have put in are /. angli- 
 ca, florentina, pumila, alata, ochroleuca, pavonia major, 
 persica, and stylosa. 
 
 The temptation became so strong that I have 
 been unable to leave the Lilium giganteum undis- 
 turbed. The bulbs and roots of the one that flow- 
 ered look healthy, but there are no decided off- 
 sets strong enough for separation. One of those 
 which have not flowered was also examined, and 
 as the bulb seemed fresh and vigorous it was cov- 
 ered up again. 
 
 206 
 
Yo que he visto mis flores marchitarse 
 
 Al soplo abrasador del aquilon, 
 Y mis suenos de dicha evaporarse, 
 
 Y morir en mi pecho la ilusidn. 
 
 Torres Caicedo. 
 
 I who have witnessed my flowers fade away 
 At the burning breath of the cruel storm, 
 
 And my dreams of bliss destroyed in a day, 
 And illusions torn out from my breast still warm. 
 
 207 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE GARDEN IN WINTER 
 
 HE winter has really come at length 
 and bud and bloom are finally 
 checked by the cold north wind. As 
 if, however, to temper the withering 
 breath of the weather, a beautiful soft and thick 
 mantle of snow has been thrown over the earth, 
 covering undulation and plain, tree and herb, with 
 its fresh, white purity. It seems to me impossible 
 to view without emotion the loveliness of the 
 vegetation upon the first good fall of snow, and I 
 feel thankful that in our country it never lies long 
 enough to allow this feeling to become habitual 
 and to lose the freshness and force with which 
 it periodically recurs. 
 
 The trees, and especially the great elm, are once 
 
 more exhibiting their beautiful tracery upon the 
 
 sky, and the famished birds again approach nearer 
 
 to the house in the hope of finding something 
 
 14 209 
 
more than the berries, which are the only food 
 now left to them. Nor shall they be disappointed, 
 for besides a matutinal meal of crumbs, are there 
 not a number of warmth-producing tallow can- 
 dles and coconuts waiting in readiness to be hung 
 up in the trees for their Christmas delectation? 
 
 There are virtually no more flowers but the yel- 
 low jasmine, and yet on the 8th of December I 
 picked a good bunch of belated, half-open rose- 
 buds, which look quite nice and refreshed in the 
 warmth of the house, in water. 
 
 A terrible tragedy occurred in the first days of 
 frost. A hungry robin forced his way through 
 the meshes of the garden aviary in which lives a 
 magpie who recently lost her mate. The poor 
 robin in his search for food little thought what 
 a dangerous expedition he had embarked upon; 
 but the result of his rashness was that he was 
 killed and eaten by his host! 
 
 The elms and the oaks parted with their leaves 
 very slowly and unwillingly, in the same way that 
 we gradually and reluctantly give up our illusions 
 and as the winter of our life approaches find our- 
 selves stripped of all the beautiful fancy foliage 
 210 
 
<0art)en in Winter 
 
 which in our earlier seasons hung about us and 
 was swayed to and fro by every breath of heaven, 
 reflecting each ray of sunshine. 
 
 Happily, however, the illusions which were 
 once realities and objects of ardent faith still 
 linger in our bared branches in the glittering frost 
 of poetry, and even though we may no longer be 
 able to subscribe to the articles of faith or to ac- 
 cept the history of the Jews as the only infallible 
 and sacred guides for our lives and conduct, we 
 can still look upon the teachings of religion as the 
 sublimest of all poetic conceptions and as the 
 most elevating power for good over the imagina- 
 tions of the human mind. 
 
 Is it possible to conceive a happier state than 
 that of being firmly convinced of the reality of 
 conditions which, although undemonstrated and 
 imaginary, transcend the best and most delightful 
 experiences of our lives ? Can any belief be more 
 blissful and consoling, in the midst of all the ills 
 we are heirs to, than that we shall live again, and 
 forever, as ourselves, preserving conscious indi- 
 viduality, in a glorified state, among surroundings 
 of perfect harmony, joy, and peace? Can any 
 211 
 
promise be more satisfactory and reassuring than 
 that in our Father's house are many mansions 
 and that we shall occupy one of them? And can 
 any trust, gratitude, and love be greater than that 
 which we feel as children for the supreme wis- 
 dom, power, tenderness, and benevolence of a 
 Father? 
 
 Oh, the poetry of it all is too exquisite ! And 
 truly such a state of mind with its beneficent in- 
 fluence must be worth striving for as the acme 
 of all that is desirable, even, perhaps, at the ex- 
 pense of strictly demonstrated truth. If we can 
 instil these exalted conceptions and bring about 
 their acceptance as truth, refining in life and com- 
 forting in death, should we not reverence and 
 support the great organizations which have un- 
 dertaken the performance of so excellent a task? 
 And if we can abstract our minds from the ameni- 
 ties and troubles of life into a higher atmosphere 
 of delectable, soothing poetry, as many of us can 
 do by careful and persevering training, is it not 
 worth doing in order to attain a continuation of 
 the happy frame of mind of the child who dwells 
 in an entrancing fairy world? 
 212 
 
d5arDett in Winter 
 
 As we part with the illusions of our youth, so 
 also do some of us find that we let go the illusions 
 once cherished as to the positive foundation of 
 the beliefs and dogmas of religion. In their place, 
 however, we may have gained a more vivid sense 
 and appreciation of the beauty and sublimity of 
 its poetry; of the life and teachings of a moralist 
 like Rabbi Joshua, etherealized in the expositions 
 of the church which is founded upon his benevo- 
 lent altruism; or of the pure pity and sympathy 
 for human frailty and suffering which led Sid- 
 dharta to the ascetic life and self-denying philoso- 
 phy which have chastened the moral standard of 
 countless millions of human beings for nearly 
 twenty-five centuries past. 
 
 A poor old woman who came to me a long time 
 ago in her distress at being given notice to quit 
 her humble abode in default of the rent, expressed 
 a reflection which has lived in my mind ever since 
 as a beautiful specimen of the poetry of religion. 
 " We are all tenants at will," she said, and she 
 found consolation in this universal and humble 
 conception before the Supreme Author of all 
 being. 
 
 213 
 
There is to me no poetry so elevating and 
 soothing as some of the hymns, and I class in the 
 same category such beautiful compositions as, for 
 instance, the anthem written by Mr. Benson on 
 our late lamented Queen : 
 
 She hath her heart's desire! 
 
 She hath her joy I 
 Joy that no time can tire, 
 
 No care destroy. . . . 
 
 And, to give another instance, such lines as were 
 written by his mother to the late Lord Dufferin, 
 with the presentation of a lamp, on his twenty- 
 first birthday: 
 
 At a most solemn pause we stand, 
 
 From this day forth, for evermore, 
 The weak but loving human hand 
 
 Must cease to guide thee as of yore. 
 Then, as thro* life thy footsteps stray 
 
 And earthly beacons dimly shine, 
 " Let there be light " upon thy way 
 
 And holier guidance far than mine I 
 "Let there be light" in thy clear soul, 
 
 When passion tempts and doubts assail 
 When grief's dark tempests o'er thee roll, 
 
 "Let there be light" that shall not fail! 
 214 
 
d&atflen in 
 
 So Angel guarded, may'st thou tread 
 
 The narrow path which few may find 
 And at the end look back, nor dread 
 
 To count the vanished years behind! 
 And pray that she, whose hand doth trace 
 
 This heart-warm prayer when life is past 
 May see and know thy blessed face, 
 
 In God's own glorious light at last. 
 
 I have sometimes questioned to myself whether 
 it is right to place before the undeveloped mind 
 subject-matter which is and must remain un- 
 demonstrated and unproved, as the most solemn 
 facts which can ever be presented to it, and I 
 have felt that a heavy responsibility must be in- 
 curred in doing so. I have reflected whether it 
 might not be better rather to train the mind into 
 an appreciation of the poetical beauties of re- 
 ligion, as the highest ideal and the goal for the 
 purest aspirations of the most refined tempera- 
 ments, and as such to be held always before us 
 and striven for with all the earnestness we can 
 command. In such a case there would at least 
 be no room for the revulsion of feeling, loss 
 of restraint, and possible despair which is apt 
 to ensue when the hitherto revered idols are 
 215 
 
broken by the force of logical and scientific 
 education. 
 
 I have arrived once more at the time of year 
 when I began to pen these Mosaics. Vegetation 
 is now quiescent and we must await the glories of 
 new life in the spring. I will end the contempla- 
 tions into which I have been led with a hymn 
 which has haunted me with its beautiful con- 
 ceptions for many years past and which returns 
 to my thoughts with renewed force, as time goes 
 on, again and again. It was given to me by an 
 old friend who knew it by heart and told me it 
 was composed by Horace Smith, entitled: 
 
 HYMN TO THE FLOWERS 
 
 Day stars! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle 
 
 From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation, 
 And dewdrops on her lonely altars sprinkle 
 As a libation. 
 
 Ye matin worshipers! who bending lowly 
 
 Before the uprisen sun God's lidless eye 
 Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy 
 Incense on high. 
 
 2l6 
 
dffatflcn in l&intw 
 
 Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty 
 
 The floors of Nature's temple tessellate, 
 What numerous emblems of instructive duty 
 Your forms create 1 
 
 'Neath cloistered boughs each floral bell that 
 
 swingeth 
 
 And tolls its perfume on the passing air 
 Makes sabbath in the fields and ever ringeth 
 A call to prayer. 
 
 Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column 
 
 Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, 
 But to that fane, most catholic and solemn, 
 Which God hath planned. 
 
 To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, 
 
 Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; 
 Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder, 
 Its dome the sky. 
 
 There as in solitude and shade I wander 
 
 Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod, 
 Awed by the silence, reverently ponder 
 The ways of God. 
 
 Your voiceless lips, O flowers ! are living preachers, 
 
 Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, 
 Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
 In loneliest nook. 
 217 
 
Jttogaicg 
 
 Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor 
 
 "Weep without woe and blush without a crime," 
 Oh, may I deeply learn and ne'er surrender 
 Your love sublime. 
 
 Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory, 
 
 Arrayed, the lilies cry, in robes like ours. 
 How vain your grandeur I Ah 1 how transitory 
 Are human flowers ! 
 
 In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly artist, 
 With which Thou paintedst Nature's wide-spread 
 
 hall, 
 
 What a delightful lesson Thou impartedst 
 Of love to all. 
 
 Not useless are ye, Flowers, though made for 
 
 pleasure, 
 
 Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night, 
 From every source your sanction bids me treasure 
 Harmless delight. 
 
 Ephemeral Sages ! What instructors hoary 
 
 For such a world of thought could furnish scope, 
 Each fading calyx a memento mori 
 And ground of hope. 
 
 Posthumous Glories! Angel-like collection! 
 
 Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth, 
 Ye are to me a type of resurrection 
 And second birth. 
 218 
 
dsartien in Winter 
 
 Were I in churchless solitudes remaining, 
 
 Far from all voice of teachers and divines, 
 My soul would find in flowers of God's ordaining 
 Priests, sermons, shrines. 
 
 FINIS 
 
 219 
 
Yd 
 
 M9562 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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