Читать книгу: «Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth», страница 7

The Magnolia has been planted in northern gardens for over a century. Gardens on Long Island have many beautiful old specimens, doubtless furnished by the Prince Nurseries. These seem thoroughly at home; just as does the Locust brought from Virginia, a century ago, by one Captain Sands of Sands Point, to please his Virginia bride with the presence of the trees of her girlhood's home. These Locusts have spread over every rood of Long Island earth, and seem as much at home as Birch or Willow. The three Magnolia trees on Mr. Brown's lawn in Flatbush are as large as any I know in the North, and were exceptionally full of bloom this year, this photograph (shown facing page 148) being taken when they were past their prime. I saw children eagerly gathering the waxy petals which had fallen, and which show so plainly in the picture. But the flower is not common enough here for northern children to learn the varied attractions of the Magnolia.

The flower lore of American children is nearly all of English derivation; but children invent as well as copy. In the South the lavish growth of the Magnolia affords multiform playthings. The beautiful broad white petals give a snowy surface for the inditing of messages or valentines, which are written with a pin, when the letters turn dark brown. The stamens of the flower – waxlike with red tips – make mock illuminating matches. The leaves shape into wonderful drinking cups, and the scarlet seeds give a glowing necklace.

The glories of a spring garden are not in the rows of flowering bulbs, beautiful as they are; but in the flowering shrubs and trees. The old garden had few shrubs, but it had unsurpassed beauty in its rows of fruit trees which in their blossoming give the spring garden, as here shown, that lovely whiteness which seems a blending of the seasons – a thought of winter's snows. The perfection of Apple blossoms I have told in another chapter. Earlier to appear was the pure white, rather chilly, blooms of the Plum tree, to the Japanese "the eldest brother of an hundred flowers." They are faintly sweet-scented with the delicacy found in many spring blossoms. A good example of the short verses of the Japanese poets tells of the Plum blossom and its perfume.

 
"In springtime, on a cloudless night,
When moonbeams throw their silver pall
O'er wooded landscapes, veiling all
In one soft cloud of misty white,
'Twere vain almost to hope to trace
The Plum trees in their lovely bloom
Of argent; 'tis their sweet perfume
Alone which leads me to their place."
 

The lovely family of double white Plum blossoms which now graces our gardens is varied by tinted ones; there are sixty in all which the nineteenth century owes to Japan.

The Peach tree has a flower which has given name to one of the loveliest colors in the world. The Peach has varieties with wonderful double flowers of glorious color. Cherry trees bear a more cheerful white flower than Plum trees.

 
"The Cherry boughs above us spread
The whitest shade was ever seen;
And flicker, flicker came and fled
Sun-spots between."
 

I do not recall the Judas tree in my childhood. I am told there were many in Worcester; but there were none in our garden, nor in our neighborhood, and that was my world. Orchids might have hung from the trees a mile from my home, and would have been no nearer me than the tropics. I had a small world, but it was large enough, since it was bounded by garden walls.

Almond trees are seldom seen in northern gardens; but the Flowering Almond flourishes as one of the purest and loveliest familiar shrubs. Silvery pink in bloom when it opens, the pink darkens till when in full flower it is deeply rosy. It was, next to the Lilac, the favorite shrub of my childhood. I used to call the exquisite little blooms "fairy roses," and there were many fairy tales relating to the Almond bush. This made the flower enhaloed with sentiment and mystery, which charmed as much as its beauty. The Flowering Almond seemed to have a special place under a window in country yards and gardens, as it is shown on page 39. A fitting spot it was, since it never grew tall enough to shade the little window panes.

With Pussy-willows and Almond blossoms and Ladies' Delights, with blossoming playhouse Apple trees and sweet-scented Lilac walks, spring was certainly Paradise in our childhood. Would it were an equally happy season in mature years; but who, garden-bred, can walk in the springtime through the garden of her childhood without thought of those who cared for the garden in its youth, and shared the care of their children with the care of their flowers, but now are seen no more.

 
"Oh, far away in some serener air,
The eyes that loved them see a heavenly dawn:
How can they bloom without her tender care?
Why should they live when her sweet life is gone?"
 

I have written of the gladness of spring, but I know nothing more overwhelming than the heartache of spring, the sadness of a fresh-growing spring garden. Where is the dear one who planted it and loved it, and he who helped her in the care, and the loving child who played in it and left it in the springtime? All that is good and beautiful has come again to us with the sunlight and warmth, save those whom we still love but can see no more. By that very measure of happiness poured for us in childhood in Lilac tide, is our cup of sadness now filled.

CHAPTER VII
OLD FLOWER FAVORITES

 
"God does not send us strange flowers every year.
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces;
The Violet is here.
 
 
"It all comes back; the odor, grace, and hue
The Violet is here.
Each sweet relation of its life repeated;
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated;
It is the thing we knew."
 

– Adeline D. T. Whitney, 1861.

Not only do I love to see the same dear things year after year, and to welcome the same odor, grace, and hue; but I love to find them in the same places. I like a garden in which plants have been growing in one spot for a long time, where they have a fixed home and surroundings. In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after year. They look, my sister says, like long-established neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they had just "moved in," and didn't know each other's names and faces. Plants grow better when they are among flower friends. I suppose we have to transplant some plants, sometimes; but I would try to keep old friends together even in those removals. They would be lonely when they opened their eyes after the winter's sleep, and saw strange flower forms and unknown faces around them.

For flowers have friendships, and antipathies as well. How Canterbury Bells and Foxgloves love to grow side by side! And Sweet Williams, with Foxgloves, as here shown. And in my sister's garden Larkspur always starts up by white Phlox – see a bit of the border on this page. Whatever may influence these docile alliances, it isn't a proper sense of fitness of color; for Tiger Lilies dearly love to grow by crimson-purple Phlox, a most inharmonious association, and you can hardly separate them. If a flower dislikes her neighbor in the garden, she moves quietly away, I don't know where or how. Sometimes she dies, but at any rate she is gone. It is so queer; I have tried every year to make Feverfew grow in this bed, and it won't do it, though it grows across the path. There is some flower here that the pompous Feverfew doesn't care to associate with. Not the Larkspur, for they are famous friends – perhaps it is the Sweet William, who is rather a plain fellow. In general flowers are very sociable with each other, but they have some preferences, and these are powerful ones.

It is amusing to read in no less than five recent English "garden-books," by flower-loving souls, the solemn advice that if you wish a beautiful garden effect you "must plant the great Oriental Poppy by the side of the White Lupine."

 
"Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way."
 

The truth is, you have very little to do with it. That Poppy chooses to keep company with the White Lupine, and to that impulse you owe your fine garden effect. The Poppy is the slyest magician of the whole garden. He comes and goes at will. This year a few blooms, nearly all in one corner; next year a blaze of color banded across the middle of the garden like the broad sash of a court chamberlain. Then a single grand blossom quite alone in the pansy bed, while another pushes up between the tight close leaves of the box edging: – the Poppy is queer.

Some flowers have such a hatred of man they cannot breathe and live in his presence, others have an equal love of human companionship. The white Clover clings here to our pathway as does the English Daisy across seas. And in our garden Ladies' Delights and Ambrosia tell us, without words, of their love for us and longing to be by our side; just as plainly as a child silently tells us his love and dependence on us by taking our hand as we walk side by side. There is not another gesture of childhood, not an affectionate word which ever touched my heart as did that trustful holding of the hand. One of my children throughout his brief life never walked by my side without clinging closely – I think without conscious intent – with his little hand to mine. I can never forget the affection, the trust of that vanished hand.

I find that my dearest flower loves are the old flowers, – not only old to me because I knew them in childhood, but old in cultivation.

 
"Give me the good old weekday blossoms
I used to see so long ago,
With hearty sweetness in their bosoms,
Ready and glad to bud and blow."
 

Even were they newcomers, we should speedily care for them, they are so lovable, so winning, so endearing. If I had seen to-day for the first time a Fritillaria, a Violet, a Lilac, a Bluebell, or a Rose, I know it would be a case of love at first sight. But with intimacy they have grown dearer still.

The sense of long-continued acquaintance and friendship which we feel for many garden flowers extends to a few blossoms of field and forest. It is felt to an inexplicable degree by all New Englanders for the Trailing Arbutus, our Mayflower; and it is this unformulated sentiment which makes us like to go to the same spot year after year to gather these beloved flowers. I am sensible of this friendship for Buttercups, they seem the same flowers I knew last year; and I have a distinct sympathy with Owen Meredith's poem: —

 
"I pluck the flowers I plucked of old
About my feet – yet fresh and cold
The Buttercups do bend;
The selfsame Buttercups they seem,
Thick in the bright-eyed green, and such
As when to me their blissful gleam
Was all earth's gold – how much!"
 

We have little of the intense sentiment, the inspiration which filled flower-lovers of olden times. We admire flowers certainly as beautiful works of nature, as objects of wonder in mechanism and in the profusion of growth, and we are occasionally roused to feelings of gratitude to the Maker and Giver of such beauty; but it is not precisely the same regard that the old gardeners and "flowerists" had, which is expressed in this quotation from Gerarde of "the gallant grace of violets": —

"They admonish and stir up a man to that which is comelie and honest; for flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and exquisite forme doe bring to a liberall and gentlemanly mind, the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse and all kinds of virtues."

It was a virtue to be comely in those days; as it is indeed a virtue now; and to the pious old herbalists it seemed an impossible thing that any creation which was beautiful should not also be good.

All flowers cannot be loved with equal warmth; it is possible to have a wholesome liking for a flower, a wish to see it around you, which would make you plant it in your borders and treat it well, but which would not be at all akin to love. For others you have a placid tolerance; others you esteem – good, virtuous, worthy creatures, but you cannot warm toward them. Sometimes they have been sung with passion by poets (Swinburne is always glowing over very unresponsive flower souls) and they have been painted with fervor by artists – and still you do not love them. I do not love Tulips, but I welcome them very cordially in my garden. Others have loved them; the Tulip has had her head turned by attention.

Some flowers we like at first sight, but they do not wear well. This is a hard truth; and I shall not shame the garden-creatures who have done their best to please by betraying them to the world, save in a single case to furnish an example. In late August the Bergamot blossoms in luxuriant heads of white and purplish pink bloom, similar in tint to the abundant Phlox. Both grow freely in the garden of Sylvester Manor. When the Bergamot has romped in your borders for two or three years, you may wish to exile it to a vegetable garden, near the blackberry vines. Is this because it is an herb instead of a purely decorative flower? You never thus thrust out Phlox. A friend confesses to me that she exiled even the splendid scarlet Bergamot after she had grown it for three years in her flower-beds; such subtle influences control our flower-loves.

Beautiful and noble as are the grand contributions of the nineteenth century to us from the garden and fields of Japan and China, we seldom speak of loving them. Thus the Chinese White Wistaria is similar in shape of blossom to the Scotch Laburnum, though a far more elegant, more lavish flower; but the Laburnum is the loved one. I used to read longingly of the Laburnum in volumes of English poetry, especially in Hood's verses, beginning: —

 
"I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,"
 

Ella Partridge had a tall Laburnum tree at her front door; it peeped in the second-story windows. It was so cherished, that I doubt whether its blooms were ever gathered. She told us with conscious pride and rectitude that it was a "yellow Wistaria tree which came from China"; I saw no reason to doubt her words, and as I never chanced to speak to my parents about it, I ever thought of it as a yellow Wistaria tree until I went out into the world and found it was a Scotch Laburnum.

Few garden owners plant now the Snowberry, Symphoricarpus racemosus, once seen in every front yard, and even used for hedges. It wasn't a very satisfactory shrub in its habit; the oval leaves were not a cheerful green, and were usually pallid with mildew. The flowers were insignificant, but the clusters of berries were as pure as pearls. In country homes, before the days of cheap winter flowers and omnipresent greenhouses, these snowy clusters were cherished to gather in winter to place on coffins and in hands as white and cold as the berries. Its special offence in our garden was partly on account of this funereal association, but chiefly because we were never permitted to gather its berries to string into necklaces. They were rigidly preserved on the stem as a garden decoration in winter; though they were too closely akin in color to the encircling snowdrifts to be of any value.

In country homes in olden times were found several universal winter posies. On the narrow mantel shelves of farm and village parlors, both in England and America, still is seen a winter posy made of dried stalks of the seed valves of a certain flower; they are shown on the opposite page. Let us see how our old friend, Gerarde, describes this plant: —

"The stalkes are loden with many flowers like the stocke-gilliflower, of a purple colour, which, being fallen, the seede cometh foorthe conteined in a flat thinne cod, with a sharp point or pricke at one end, in fashion of the moone, and somewhat blackish. This cod is composed of three filmes or skins whereof the two outermost are of an overworne ashe colour, and the innermost, or that in the middle whereon the seed doth hang or cleave, is thin and cleere shining, like a piece of white satten newly cut from the peece."

In the latter clause of this striking description is given the reason for the popular name of the flower, Satin-flower or White Satin, for the inner septum is a shining membrane resembling white satin. Another interesting name is Pricksong-flower. All who have seen sheets of music of Elizabethan days, when the notes of music were called pricks, and the whole sheet a pricksong, will readily trace the resemblance to the seeds of this plant.

Gerarde says it was named "Penny-floure, Money-floure, Silver-plate, Sattin, and among our women called Honestie." The last name was commonly applied at the close of the eighteenth century. It is thus named in writings of Rev. William Hanbury, 1771, and a Boston seedsman then advertised seeds of Honestie "in small quantities, that all might have some." In 1665, Josselyn found White Satin planted and growing plentifully in New England gardens, where I am sure it formed, in garden and house, a happy reminder of their English homes to the wives of the colonists. Since that time it has spread so freely in some localities, especially in southern Connecticut, that it grows wild by the wayside. It is seldom seen now in well-kept gardens, though it should be, for it is really a lovely flower, showing from white to varied and rich light purples. I was charmed with its fresh beauty this spring in the garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright; a photograph of one of her borders containing Honesty is shown opposite page 174.

At Belvoir Castle in England, in the "Duchess's Garden," the Satin-flower can be seen in full variety of tint, and fills an important place. It is carefully cultivated by seed and division, all inferior plants being promptly destroyed, while the superior blossoms are cherished.

The flower was much used in charms and spells, as was everything connected with the moon. Drayton's Clarinax sings of Lunaria: —

 
"Enchanting lunarie here lies
In sorceries excelling."
 

As a child this Lunaria was a favorite flower, for it afforded to us juvenile money. Indeed, it was generally known among us as Money-flower or Money-seed, or sometimes as Money-in-both-pockets. The seed valves formed our medium of exchange and trade, passing as silver dollars.

Through the streets of a New England village there strolled, harmless and happy, one who was known in village parlance as a "softy," one of "God's fools," a poor addle-pated, simple-minded creature, witless – but neither homeless nor friendless; for children cared for him, and feeble-minded though he was, he managed to earn, by rush-seating chairs and weaving coarse baskets, and gathering berries, scant pennies enough to keep him alive; and he slept in a deserted barn, in a field full of rocks and Daisies and Blueberry bushes, – a barn which had been built by one but little more gifted with wits than himself. Poor Elmer never was able to understand that the money which he and the children saved so carefully each autumn from the money plants was not equal in value to the great copper cents of the village store; and when he asked gleefully for a loaf of bread or a quart of molasses, was just as apt to offer the shining seed valves in payment as he was to give the coin of the land; and it must be added that his belief received apparent confirmation in the fact that he usually got the bread whether he gave seeds or cents.

He lost his life through his poor simple notion. In the village he was kindly treated by all, clothed, fed, and warmed; but one day there came skulking along the edge of the village what were then rare visitors, two tramps, who by ill-chance met poor Elmer as he was gathering chestnuts. And as the children lingered on their way home from school to take toll of Elmer's store of nuts, they heard him boasting gleefully of his wealth, "hundreds and hundreds of dollars all safe for winter." The children knew what his dollars were, but the tramps did not. Three days of heavy rain passed by, and Elmer did not appear at the store or any house. Then kindly neighbors went to his barn in the distant field, and found him cruelly beaten, with broken ribs and in a high fever, while scattered around him were hundreds of the seeds of his autumnal store of the money plant; these were all the silver dollars his assailants found. He was carried to the almshouse and died in a few weeks, partly from the beating, partly from exposure, but chiefly, I ever believed, from homesickness in his enforced home. His old house has fallen down, but his well still is open, and around it grows a vast expanse of Lunaria, which has spread and grown from the seeds poor Elmer saved, and every year shoots of the tender lilac blooms mingle so charmingly with the white Daisies that the sterile field is one of the show-places of the village, and people drive from afar to see it.

There grow in profusion in our home garden what I always called the Mullein Pink, the Rose Campion (Lychnis coronaria). I never heard any one speak of this plant with special affection or admiration; but as a child I loved its crimson flower more than any other flower in the garden. Perhaps I should say I loved the royal color rather than the flower. I gathered tight bunches without foliage into a glowing mass of color unequalled in richness of tint by anything in nature. I have seen only in a stained glass window flooded with high sunlight a crimson approaching that of the Mullein Pink. Gerarde calls the flower the "Gardener's Delight or Gardner's Eie." It was known in French as the Eye of God; and the Rose of Heaven. We used to rub our cheeks with the woolly leaves to give a beautiful rosy blush, and thereby I once skinned one cheek.

Snapdragons were a beloved flower – companions of my childhood in our home garden, but they have been neglected a bit by nearly every one of late years. Plant a clump of the clear yellow and one of pure white Snapdragons, and see how beautiful they are in the garden, and how fresh they keep when cut. We had such a satisfying bunch of them on the dinner table to-day, in a milk-white glazed Chinese jar; yellow Snapdragons, with "borrowed leaves" of Virgin's-bower (Adlumia) and a haze of Gypsophila over all.

A flower much admired in gardens during the early years of the nineteenth century was the Plume Poppy (Bocconia). It has a pretty pinkish bloom in general shape somewhat like Meadow Rue (see page 164 and page 167). A friend fancied a light feathery look over certain of her garden borders, and she planted plentifully Plume Poppy and Meadow Rue; this was in 1895. In 1896 the effect was exquisite; in 1897 the garden feathered out with far too much fulness; in 1901 all the combined forces of all the weeds of the garden could not equal these two flowers in utter usurpment and close occupation of every inch of that garden. The Plume Poppy has a strong tap-root which would be a good symbol of the root of the tree Ygdrassyl – the Tree of Life, that never dies. You can go over the borders with scythe and spade and hoe, and even with manicure-scissors, but roots of the Plume Poppy will still hide and send up vigorous growth the succeeding year.

We have grown so familiar with some old doubled blossoms that we think little of their being double. One such, symmetrical of growth, beautiful of foliage, and gratifying of bloom, is the Double Buttercup. It is to me distinctly one of our most old-fashioned flowers in aspect. A hardy great clump of many years' growth is one of the ancient treasures of our garden; its golden globes are known in England as Bachelor's Buttons, and are believed by many to be the Bachelor's Buttons of Shakespeare's day.

Dahlias afford a striking example of the beauty of single flowers when compared to their doubled descendants. Single Dahlias are fine flowers, the yellow and scarlet ones especially so. I never thought double Dahlias really worth the trouble spent on them in our Northern gardens; so much staking and tying, and fussing, and usually an autumn storm wrenches them round and breaks the stem or a frost nips them just as they are in bloom. A Dahlia hedge or a walk such as this one at Ravensworth, Virginia, is most stately and satisfying. I like, in moderation, many of the smaller single and double Sunflowers. Under the reign of Patience, the Sunflower had a fleeting day of popularity, and flaunted in garden and parlor. Its place was false. It was never a garden flower in olden times, in the sense of being a flower of ornament or beauty; its place was in the kitchen garden, where it belongs.

Peas have ever been favorites in English gardens since they were brought to England. We have all seen the print, if not the portrait, of Queen Elizabeth garbed in a white satin robe magnificently embroidered with open pea-pods and butterflies. A "City of London Madam" had a delightful head ornament of open pea-pods filled with peas of pearls; this was worn over a hood of gold-embroidered muslin, and with dyed red hair, must have been a most modish affair. Sweet Peas have had a unique history. They have been for a century a much-loved flower of the people both in England and America, and they were at home in cottage borders and fine gardens; were placed in vases, and carried in nosegays and posies; were loved of poets – Keats wrote an exquisite characterization of them. They had beauty of color, and a universally loved perfume – but florists have been blind to them till within a few years. A bicentenary exhibition of Sweet Peas was given in London in July, 1900; now there is formed a Sweet Pea Society. But no societies and no exhibitions ever will make them a "florist's flower"; they are of value only for cutting; their habit of growth renders them useless as a garden decoration.

We all take notions in regard to flowers, just as we do in regard to people. I hear one friend say, "I love every flower that grows," but I answer with emphasis, "I don't!" I have ever disliked the Portulaca, – I hate its stems. It is my fate never to escape it. I planted it once to grow under Sweet Alyssum in the little enclosure of earth behind my city home; when I returned in the autumn, everything was covered, blanketed, overwhelmed with Portulaca. Since then it comes up even in the grass, and seems to thrive by being trampled upon. The Portulaca was not a flower of colonial days; I am glad to learn our great-grandmothers were not pestered with it; it was not described in the Botanical Magazine till 1829.

I do not care for the Petunia close at hand on account of its sickish odor. But in the dusky border the flowers shine like white stars (page 180), and make you almost forgive their poor colors in the daylight. I never liked the Calceolaria. Every child in our town used to have a Calceolaria in her own small garden plot, but I never wanted one. I care little for Chrysanthemums; they fill in the border in autumn, and they look pretty well growing, but I like few of the flowers close at hand. By some curious twist of a brain which, alas! is apt not to deal as it is expected and ought to, with sensations furnished to it, I have felt this distaste for Chrysanthemums since I attended a Chrysanthemum Show. Of course, I ought to love them far more, and have more eager interest in them – but I do not. Their sister, the China Aster, I care little for. The Germans call Asters "death-flowers." The Empress of Austria at the Swiss hotel where she lodged just before she was murdered, found the rooms decorated with China Asters. She said to her attendant that the flowers were in Austria termed death-flowers – and so they proved. The Aster is among the flowers prohibited in Japan for felicitous occasions, as are the Balsam, Rhododendron, and Azalea.

Those who read these pages may note perhaps that I say little of Lilies. I do not care as much for them as most garden lovers do. I like all our wild Lilies, especially the yellow Nodding Lily of our fields; and the Lemon Lily of our gardens is ever a delight; but the stately Lilies which are such general favorites, Madonna Lilies, Japan Lilies, the Gold-banded Lilies, are not especially dear to me.

I love climbing vines, whether of delicate leaf or beautiful flower. In a room I place all the decoration that I can on the walls, out of the way, leaving thus space to move around without fear of displacement or injury of fragile things; so in a limited garden space, grass room under our feet, with flowering vines on the surrounding walls are better than many crowded flower borders. A tiny space can quickly be made delightful with climbing plants. The common Morning-glory, called in England the Bell-bind, is frequently advertised by florists of more encouragement than judgment, as suitable to plant freely in order to cover fences and poor sandy patches of ground with speedy and abundant leafage and bloom. There is no doubt that the Morning-glory will do all this and far more than is promised. It will also spread above and below ground from the poor strip of earth to every other corner of garden and farm. This it has done till, in our Eastern states, it is now classed as a wild flower. It will never look wild, however, meet it where you will. It is as domestic and tame as a barnyard fowl, which, wandering in the wildest woodland, could never be mistaken as game. The garden at Claymont, the Virginia home of Mr. Frank R. Stockton, afforded a striking example of the spreading and strangling properties of the Morning-glory, not under encouragement, but simply under toleration. Mr. Stockton tells me that the entire expanse of his yards and garden, when he first saw them, was a solid mass of Morning-glory blooms. Every stick, every stem, every stalk, every shrub and blade of grass, every vegetable growth, whether dead or alive, had its encircling and overwhelming Morning-glory companion, set full of tiny undersized blossoms of varied tints. It was a beautiful sight at break of day, – a vast expanse of acres jewelled with Morning-glories – but it wasn't the new owner's notion of a flower garden.

In my childhood flower agents used to canvass country towns from house to house. Sometimes they had a general catalogue, and sold many plants, trees, and shrubs. Oftener they had but a single plant which they were "booming." I suspect that their trade came through the sudden introduction of so many and varied flowers and shrubs from China and Japan. I am told that the first Chinese Wistarias and a certain Fringe tree were sold in this manner; and I know the white Hydrangea was, for I recall it, though I do not know that this was its first sale. I remember too that suddenly half the houses in town, on piazza or trellis, had the rich purple blooms of the Clematis Jackmanni; for a very persuasive agent had gone through the town the previous year. Of course people of means bought then, as now, at nurseries; but at many humble homes, whose owners would never have thought of buying from a greenhouse, he sold his plants. It gave an agreeable rivalry, when all started plants together, to see whose flourished best and had the amplest bloom. Thoreau recalled the pleasant emulation of many owners in Concord of a certain Rhododendron, sold thus sweepingly by an agent. The purple Clematis displaced an old climbing favorite, the Trumpet Honeysuckle, once seen by every door. It was so beloved of humming-birds and so beautiful, I wonder we could ever destroy it. Its downfall was hastened by its being infested by a myriad of tiny green aphides, which proceeded from it to our Roses. I recall well these little plant insects, for I was very fond of picking the tubes of the Honeysuckle for the drop of pure honey within, and I had to abandon reluctantly the sweet morsels.