ISiiiliiiPiPfm^ mmm THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BEQUEST OF Alice R. Hilgard a i^7y ifU^^'' ^ / 1-*-^ ,A/ ar/ ^ 7 ^ 'yc^/,-^^u^ /»/ l^^^/^ ^ 0/>-^^.^->*>//dZc^ ^CC/^J^^tSMA^U^ Jjg ^X/ 4^/ '--^(Z^C^ f rX^ -p ~^ ^x -^^ foCA 7, ' The Hillocks Aie Green and Full of Sunshine The Fragrant Note Book Romance and Legend of the Flower Garden and the Bye-Way By C. Arthur Coan, LL.B. " The History of an Appearance" " Nature's Harmonic Unity" {collab.), etc. Decorated and Illustrated by Frances G. Ghallenor Goan G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London ZTbe •ftnicfterbocftcc prcea 1917 Copyright, 1917 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS GIFT Ube ftnfcliecboclter press, l^ew ISorh CONTENTS Introductory: The Lodge of the Dumb Porter I. — The Garden Gate, including "The Garden Antiphone,"* II. — Spring's Promise III. — The Dingle Dell . IV. — The Little People . V. — Hera's Messenger Service VI. — The Morn of a Thousand Roses VII. — The Four Winds of Heaven.* An Inter LUDE VIII. — Great-Grandam's Posy . IX. — Hedgerows and Hillocks Green X. — The Masquerader ... XL — Flora's Sceptre XII. — ^A Year and a Day.* An Interlude XIII. — The Chancellor's Conscience XIV. — Auspicious Hope The Cold Frames . PAGB I 5 9 i6 29 45 49 55 62 69 85 90 96 98 105 "5 *the interludes Introduced as interludes or incidental verses will be found the following poems composed by the author and, with one or two exceptions, written especially for The Fragrant Note Book. These latter have not appeared previously : The Garden Antiphone, The Puppy's Lament, Petunia Hats, The Puppy^s Approval, The Four Winds of Heaven, Grandam's Posy, A Year and a Day, and Who'll Bring Yule Logs ? M852931 i \ A "^. Fragrant Note Book OF THE DUMB PORTER WANDERING along the lanes and bye-ways of life, should you choose certain turns in their pre- scribed order you would find yourself (as it seems that you have) facing the modest little lodge of my dumb j porter. He is dumb and he is ancient, and that of itself being unusual should prove to be interesting, since the aged are cus- tomarily garrulous; but he is a good chap withal and will come stiunping to meet you from his little shelter which has a back and sides but is open in front. He calls it "The Bindings. " I The Arab has a saying that where he has struck flint to ! tinder and tinder to wood and the warming blaze has spnmg up, there for the time being the son of Allah is at home. \ ■ Even in this spirit of the desert wanderer has a generous ^ hearth been built in the lodge of Caxton my dumb porter, whose hospitality you need never doubt and who will early draw your attention to the old inscription graven over the fireplace, / Zbc jfragrant IRote Book TO SAY YOU ARE WELCOME WERE SUPERFLUOUS. " II the inglenook beside the hearth he will point you to f the guest book and lay his work-worn hand upon the, volume while with a taloned fore-finger he will underscore y^^ the message printed at the top. Clearly he wishes you to read the page and will not be satisfied else. Indulgent of his dumbness rather than interested in what you ex- pect to find, you glance at the leaf which bears this ~^\ To ALL visitors: The Sumb' porter has been carefully instructed to welcome all who enter and who wish to proceed farther through the grounds. To those who feel themselves already weary it is r frankly suggested that he who reads may run. Cax- ton will explain to you in his voiceless way that the purpose of the gardener has been, while raising plants of his own, also to collect flowers from all climes, flowers of all colours, flowers of all the ages. Thriving in his garden will be found buds of poetry, blos- soms of romance, perennial history, sprigs of mytho- logy, with the seeds of fragrant legend and folk-lore. The gardener recognises that everyone loves flowers though everyone cannot grow them; that everyone loves romance and a good poem though everyone cannot live the one nor write the other; that the his- tory and literature of the world are constantly linking ;r lot)ge of tbe Bumb porter romance and poesy with certain flowers and painting \ JrioT us a glowing floral picture by no means restricted to the simple colours of an Apelles palette. Pilgrim, would you catch up an armful of these if they were ready at your hand? If so, follow the dumb porter and he will show you the promise of spring and the dingle dell ; and the gardener will sing you occasional songs of his own and will tell you tale upon tale of the flowers in which you will hear myth and legend, folk-lore and history a-plenty, but of horticulture, not a word. In order that those who wish may know whence the flowers have been brought and who first planted and watered them, small cold I frames will be fotmd at the back of the garden where \ \ Caxton has carefully preserved these little biographi- \ ! cal nothings in the form of foot notes and these are open to the inspection of all seekers after exact knowledge. /j ;^ (4 t) As to the grounds themselves, pray use them as your own. This is no city park in which the weary palmer need dread signs inviting him to keep off the grass and attaching strange and unusual penalties to the break- ing of this or the plucking of that. The grounds, the flowers and the waters are, it is true, as the Brush- wood Boy found them, "strictly preserved," but preserved only in order to emphasise the gardener's hearty invitation to \ ^ U V ^ k \ /i, SI Zbc ifraorant IWote »ooft " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. '' Old time is still a-flying And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying." Yours is the garden, yours the lodge and yours the Dumb Porter who comes now to lead you to the GARDEN GATE. >.N^\ H /t^^ \ I ( ^^ THROUGH many happy joumeyings, through com- munings with nature here and pleasant converse with nature-loving humans there, I feel the constant humming of two motifs as of an invisible orchestra, playing sans doute to countless others besides myself, but playing withal so softly and intimately that it might almost seem that they make music for one only at a time. And the two or- chestral themes, ringing now in melodious antiphonal and now in harmonic chorus are ever the same to me, — "the WONDER OF creation" and "the romance of creation's MAN. " Being however but an indifferent theologian, I have restricted my notes to the man-motif and here we have, blown from the four winds of heaven, classic and legend, romance and fable, twined about the dearest flowers of our gardens and hillsides. And if I have linked them all together in a story and if, as the guest-book foretold, I have conceived and simg to you a song of my own now and then as an interlude, it has been, let me hope, not amiss. The odds and ends, scraps and vi- W "I k y J J \m / X ^ tTbe Jfragrant 1Rote Book sions which I have endeavoured to mould together for you, have been gleaned from idle jottings in what I have familiarly called " The Fragrant Note Book," and by your leave I shall relate to you first a little waking dream which came to me not long ago and which perchance will serve to unlock the door into the inner garden as readily as any other key. V THE GARDEN ANTI PHONE' Sitting under the waning moon on a midsummer night, — such a moon as an August night sometimes brings, — I heard beneath my window the sound of impersonal voices. These ^ | presently arranged themselves in what I might call The Garden Antiphone. (The Garden Voice) Whispers here ! Whispers there! Through my garden everywhere. Voices, HO ! do you know WHAT MY GARDEN VISTAS SHOW? Children Maying, Farmers hajdng, Lambs that frisk. Tree- tops swaying; Sunny days. Honey days, '' Lights and shadow always playing; Birds alight and birds aflight Coming, going, — mom 'till night. * Copyright, 1915, C. Arthur Coan. ^ \ rA ZTbe (Barben (3ate Garden hours like scented flowers Fill my summer day's delight. (The Pessimist Voice) Sweets of May! That is to say Sweets for an hour, — ^lost in a day! Flowers of June ! Like the lilting tune , Of the thrush above, — and gone as soon. But of August, what ? Ah, I have you When the leaves all parch and the ground Midsummer days have but dusty ways, ^Arid and drear are their sunburnt greys / j (The Optimist Voice) From early spring till red leaves Clear days, wet days, fair or squall Each its note and each its colour Nature has true need of all. (Voice of the Flowers) The crocus white brings spring's deli The jonquil bold, the tulip bright; Poppies today, and the rose alway, Flowers these 'till summer's height. Then flaming phlox and dainty stocks Follow close the hollyhocks With lupines blue and asters too /" Standing straight and orthodox. / // ^be fragrant 1Rote Booh '- \ I (Voice of the Birds) The tanager calls to his modest mate, (Scarlet contrast to the drab sedate!) Orioles gold and flickers bold, Up in the tree-top and down by the gate. Prim little fellows, the finches in yellows Cutting a swath with their undulant flight; The robin red-breasted, the wood-pecker crested,^ No wing ever rested \ I \ L ^ Till day ends in night. / S^ \ \ .... (The Garden Voice again) Come walk with me. I'd talk with thee Of joys which were and are to be, Of woods and brooks and pools and nooks, Of this to hear and that to see ! Of children Maying, farmers haying, , Lambs that frisk, tree-tops swaying, \ Sunny days, honey days. Lights and shadows always playing; Birds alight and birds aflight Coming, going, — mom 'till night. Garden hours like scented flowers Fill my summer day's delight. c spring's promise /(KJ ROWN the year with lilies; clothe the fields with i poppies; deck the bower with roses; all of this will I . nature help us to do, but how shall we know that 'glad* spring has come without a crocus or a daffydowndilly to point the daring way, or to thaw rough winter into a soft and vernal rebirth? And what so bold as the snow-drop, the "Herald of fair Flora's train" or more hopeful than 'The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould, Naked, shivering with his cup of gold." - -- — -*^»-^ What could be more full of the glowing promise of spring than those bold coquettes the ruddy tulip and her white and saffron sisters. Now may we all find an intimate who will watch and ward keep over us such as Lamb so affectionately claimed in Coleridge, who, he says, "Tends me as a gardener 'tends his young tulip . . . and a tulip of all flowers loves to be admired most. " Bold coquettes they are and always have been, these tulips, and ever com- manding attention to their beauty. Perhaps this explains i H tCbe jfragrant IRote Booh / why Shirley, writing in the time of the iron-fisted Cromwell; forbids them the garden which should sometime be his and in which so complete will be the poet's retirement tha "though every day he walk around, the sim should seldom, see. ' ' Could anyone expect gay tulips to find a welcome unde: such an austere eye? No, whatever else Shirley may have been, he was at least consistent in patterning his garden to suit the dull brown of the times in which he wrote; and was in his quaint way perfectly obdurate in securing his little sacred plot against such an invasion, decreeing that in his arrangement, \V '*^;AI \fl^^ " Those tulips that such wealth display To court my eye, shall lose their name, Though now they listen as if they Expected I should praise their flame Not always, it is true, was Shirley of so sad a mien; yet how under the shadow of the great roundheads and within con- stant soimd of the tread of their square toes, could he sing a free and abandoned song to a gay little flirt like the tulip? Now Lovelace, with his IHt and his ring, laboured under no such restraint, nor found it unseemly to sing praise of sprightliness where'er he found it ; in the bird, the smiling sun or in "the rich-robed tulip who clad all in tissu clothes doeth woo." Spring is generous, too, with her promises, recording them up in the tree-tops as well as down by the gate. Here swings in the wind a beautiful pink almond, — a modest, small sister! J V / \m ^ Sprlng'0 ipromiee of the charm of Palestine where it is ever the harbinger of spring, blooming before it leaves-out and reminding us poetically that its very Hebrew name signifies "to hasten" and carrying us romantically back to Mosaic times when Aaron's almond rod so miraculously blossomed forth. Spring at home is glorious and full of promise, but ah! the lure of the spring of the Holy Land, now so rugged and at times so forbidding where once it flowed with milk and honey; yet ever carpeted in spring with scariet poppies, the lily-of- the-field, the rose of sharon, and canopying us with the blossom of the orange and almond. But we are too far afield, and in our garden we cannot forget that Now the noisy winds are still, April's coming up the hill; All the spring is in her train, Led by shining ranks of rain; Pit, pat, patter, clatter. Sudden sun and clatter, patter, First the blue and then the shower Bursting bud and shining flower; Brooks set free with tinkling ring; Birds too full of song to sing; Crisp old leaves astir with prid< Where the timid violets hide; All things ready with a will April's coming up the hill." Fulfilment follows close on the heels of promise when at last April comes up the hill and already we see the daffodils Zbc fraarant l^ote »ook eagerly pushing up their tender green leaves and claiming by their courage the attention which even a bolder flare of colour might not command. Intimately must Perdita, king's daughter though she were, have known her southern garden to have talked of buds and blossoms so feelingly with Camilio, picking out, as well a princess might, the ^ "Daffodils >>^] That come before the swallow dares, and ^\ ] Take the winds of March with beauty." \ y But let us be introspective. What, in truth, have we here, — a dajffodil, such as we speak of today, or a daffodilly, such as our gran'thers knew, or the sweet daffidowndilly of which Spenser wrote in his Faerie Queen ? Why, in truth to answer, we have, forsooth, them all, and all as old as old Homer, whose "asphodel " we of later date have made over and taken for our own under this slightly varied name, varied perhaps to correspond with the variance in species. But the rose by any other name's as sweet, and how then shall "asphodel" bloom less the yellow because we call it "daffo- dil" or be to us less the dear because we see and love it in the spring, — the hour of life and living, — ^instead of growing wild and rank amongst the classic tombs of Homer's dead? To us with the daffodil comes naturally the picture of snows j just melting, life just starting, buds just parting, with flowers and bowers and birds and sun! And how easy with this picture it is to see ^y. II ) ^^^ ^ IC Spr!ng*0 promtee " The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, — Melissa, with her hand upon the lock. A rosy blond, and in a college gown \ That clad her like an April daffodilly." Nature is so generous with her spring flowers that we must bear with what patience we may the speed with which these yellow favourites will hide their heads and run away. Knowing full well how much beauty is to follow, one yet feels with Herrick a little lonely when they are gone. We too can say with him, "Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon. " But now perhaps, with a deep obei- sance to future bulb catalogues,^ I am to be reminded that the daffodils are, after all, only a kind of narcissi with much bad Latin added to their otherwise romantic names. I bow. I bow meekly, and the less im willingly in that "Narcissus " is no less classic and romantic than Homer's asphodel. If we are, however, to think of the pretty tales of Echo and her lover we must supplant the modem letter "c" with the ancient Greek "kappa" and call our flower- god "Narkissos, " for so it was that he fared on high Olympus. And his love affair with Echo was such a very pretty one. Echo, you will remember, was one of the nymphs who attended upon Hera, and not unlike some other nymphs, some modem n3niiphs, she was passingly loquacious. Zeus, of course, soon heard of it and like a perfectly modem gentle- man, put it to immediate use. So you see, when he had a A h y> -> v c ^ \\ I' i ^. / 24 Wat ifragrant 1Rote Book The glories of our dingle dell are not exhausted and yet we , can scarcely look at the warm banks where the sunshine J plays a dreamy dance with the shadowy leaves without half expecting to see the breezy cyclamen nodding at us. <5:v " As some lone miser, visiting his store Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er, Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, '-<^ Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still." Were our wild-wood in the Holy Land, cyclamen we should have in countless thousands, and even nearer at home wie might see "Those wayside shrines of sunny Italy where gillifiower and cyclamen are renewed with every morning." Let us however be modest. We must not expect too lavish a profusion for any one favoured spot of ours for what does Mahomet say: "Benign is God towards his servants. For whom He will doth He provide; and He is the Strong, the Mighty. . . . Should God bestow abundance upon his servants they might act wantonly on the earth; but He sendeth down what He will by measure; for He knoweth, beholdeth his servants. " \ \ \ I Almost as if in answer to our bold wish for the cyclamen of the Holy Land we see all about us however the little white faces of the Star of Bethlehem to charm us with its innocent purity and to remind us of the little town south of Jerusalem where the babe lay in the manger nearly two thousand years ago and many thousand miles away. It is amusing to hear a 1 1/ \ zbe mmic Deti Syrian pronounce the ancient name "Beit Lahm" and realize how very much it resembles "Bedlam," the Cockney corrup- tion for the old Templar's hospital, though of course they both refer to the little village nestling in the hills of Palestine. The bright star flowers are such sweet reminders of the days when Melchior, King of Light, Caspar, the Little White One, and Belthazar, Lord of Treasures, made their pilgrim- age from the far East, journeying doubtless through many a field where once David watched his flocks and which we should now find all a-foam with these dainty flowers, and came to lay gold, frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the new-born king. I M By this time you will have learned Qial the dingle dell is very full of contrasts and contradictions. Here, amidst showers of the Httle stars of Bethlehem, as pure reminders of the dim-Ht stall to which the carpenter of Nazareth had hurried for protection, and symbols of a glory only Heavenly, we find the twisting periwinkle, telling us with its serene blue eye that it is a true myrtle, — a sign from the Lord in the days of prophecy and a type of earthly power and leadership in days more modem. Venerable Isaiah tells us that "Instead of the thorn shall come up the firtree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree ; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. " Is it not more than a little remarkable that this same myrtle family which should be to the Lord a sign, should also from the earliest days of Creece have been an 26 Zbc fragrant tiotc 1Boo\{ / y emblem of civic authority and victory and held sacred even to the mighty goddess Aphrodite, who ruled her realm not with a rod of iron but with rods of myrtle. "About the sweet bag of a Bee Two Cupids fell at odds; And whose the pretty prize shu'd ^q They vow'd to ask the Gods. fWhich Venus hearing, thither came, i? And for their boldness stript them; And taking thence from each his flame, With rods of Mirtle whipt them. \ Jr Which done, to still their wanton cries When quiet grown she'd seen them, She kist and wiped thir dove like eyes And gave the Bag between them." Such dainty reprimands and such gentle punishments as Venus could administer to her little messengers were however far from being the only instances in which we hear of the myrtle as emblematic of authority. Doctor Johnson reminds us again of this fact that the myrtle is "Ensign of supreme command consigned to Venus," and it is impossible to think of the bay, the laurel and the myrtle except as typifying success, and as being the very substance of the victor's crown and the spirit of his acclaim. History, poetry, romance, — all are full of it. y^ H- For deathless laurel is the victor's due." \ \ ^> / '}. \ ffbe Dlnfile Dell 27 It must have been almost in spite of himself that Scotland was allowed to crown her Bobby. So sweet a singer, yet so mtolerant of all authority and so very much a law unto himself that it was hard for him to rank an emblem of command or victory at the top of his flower favourites, even when a grateful country stood vainly waiting and ready tO: place that emblem on his unwilling brow. More than once does Bums speak of his preference for the blossoms of his own hillsides, and in no uncertain tones: /rm. ''Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon; Where bright-beaming summers exhalt the perfume. Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom." And if the living laurel and verdant bay are emblems of victory and success, so shall we find that their withering and decay have been taken as portent of evil. In "Richard II. " when all are in dread black doubt as to the fate of the King, do we not find the superstitious Welsh Captain saying to my lord Salisbury, " 'Tis thought the king is dead. We will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all withered And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven. " But after all, our little world is full of many, many beauti- ful things besides myrtle and laurel, — things with neither evil portent nor love philtre within their frail cups, and bear- ing to man nor threat nor promise, but only beauty and fleeting pleasure. And so we wander from sunshine to cool \^} / i i /. i / \ V ' / i U i ttbe fraarant "Rote »ooft shade and from shadow to noon's glare; we cross tiny brooks on goodly stones, whistle to the mocking thrushes, throw last year's acorns at the impudent squirrels, singing the while a merry song and seeking neither crowns, coronets nor ' honours; for in an independent world our bosky bourn is the! most independent of places, and had we a minstrel with us we should choose for our troubadour some carefree scamp who could sing with a cheerful abandon CA"^ THE LITTLE PEOPLE "This is the fairy land; O, spite of spites We talk with goblins, owls and elvish sprites. " Comedy of Errors. IT is a question debatable between my dog and me whether he or his master most enjoys the days in the woods ; whether quadruped or biped finds there the greater number of friends. When puppy, with a quick, sharp bark and his ears a-cock, makes a head-long dive into the brambles, I may expect to see Mollie Cotton-tail kangarooing out from below, or hear the rapid fire report of a partridge breaking from cover. Such things we both imderstand. But there are other times when, like the old plantation negress, he "stands fast awake and a-dreaming," his eyes focused somewhere in the fourth dimensional space and seeing the imseen. If 1 1 call him at such times, he comes obedient to habit, but his entire canine mind is absorbed otherwhere and he is thinking thoughts unkenned of superior beings. How desperately the brute tries to enlighten stupid man! Occasionally and with a dramatic art, I am made to understand what he has to tell, though I see only through a glass, darkly. Among puppy's very best woodland friends are the fairies with ^r^ '^ \ A\l •7.. i M 30 ZTbe jfragrant IRote Booft whom he gambols with reckless abandon and to whom he has endeavoured time and again to introduce his master. Only a few days ago, with incomprehension writ large over his faithful face and a wistful look of his eyes, he made clear to me his regret that I was no Melampus, able to understand every woodland tongue as he does. He is a clever little beast, but you see his education has not progressed beyond the spelling of simple words like c-A-T — and r-a-t — , so I have written out for him /I ^ THE PUPPY S LAMENT See all the fairies, master, do look! Not up in the tree, sir, — down by the brook; See them all dance, Heigh-diddle-diddle, See them all prance to the tune of the fiddle. Master, you surely must see them by this! They're good Uttle friends of mine. Blow them a They're smallish to look at and not good to eal But surely they're plain as the boots on your feet I hope you'll forgive me, sir, if I say \ That you're not quite attending, — you look the wrong And please, sir, I feel that I'd like if I might \ \ To play with the fairies. They know me all right. I'm really most gentle, because, don't you If ever I hurt one, how sorry I'd be. Now, master, how can you sit on that loj Seeing no fairies but only your dog ! 0 fl XTbe Xlftle jSeople Look again, master, look again, do. There's one on your shoulder laughing at you And there on your hat sits a cute Httle elf So funny I'm almost laughing myself/;; Look again, master, look again, do. Puppy's not fooling. Honest and true The fairies swarm 'round us thicker than bees Can't master see what his puppy dog sees? 31 \ vv But I'm improving. How could one rail with such an unspeakably eager tutor. I am getting now so that I know several of the fairies by name and of course they have always known me for the great blundering human that I am. Many fairy things are still dark to me, and among others, I have not yet been able to find out much about the fairy calendar. It is very easy to see that the Little People love the early simrise and the twilight and the high midnight, which is of course their high noon. All the fashionable fairy weddings take place at high midnight. This much I have learned for certain, but I do not believe that they have days of the week or perhaps know one day from another. At least, if they do I cannot find out which is their Sunday, because they do not all seem to go to church on the same day. Perhaps the Mohammedan fairies put on their Turk's Caps and go to the fairy mosque on Friday just as if they were Httle djinns in Mecca, while others put off their church / / J S^2:;< \\l '' AVW..' . / \ 32 the fraotant IRote Booft going until Saturday or Sunday just as if they belonged to different religions, like other people. You see on this important subject the puppy cannot ^''y Now with boots on his feet, an old cap on his head, a gun in his hand and a pipe in his teeth, master stands revealed ^>w A I K 34 Zbc jTragrant IRote Booh and with a clumsy attempt at quiet they steal out together into the dewy dawn. Yes, this is a red-letter day. On such a day not long ago we met group after group of the Little People all trucked out in their flowery best (and ^t , ^^^ that, you know is fairy for Sunday best) . You will remember A^^^y^ that in his lament the puppy had told me that "they kneW him all right " and it was quite evident that they did. Indeed.--;;^ I doubt otherwise if I should have seen them at all, as they can dodge behind a shadow quicker'n you can wink your eye. Puppy, however, was a great assistance for not only did they know him but evidently knew him for the honourable little gentleman that he is, and so when he assured them that while I was rather large I might nevertheless be trusted and gave me, I might say, quite a good character, the fairies took his word for it and asked us if we would like to join them in their religious observance of a fairy Sunday, exact- .| ing first, however, a promise that I would take great care not I to step on the church roof or do any unnecessary harm. They explained that as they intended to remain visible out of deference to my defective human vision, they could not so easily escape from human clumsiness. It seems that an invisible fairy is sprier than a visible one. I selected a good sound log and with the dog contentedly crouching at my feet sat down to watch the arrivals. No, I wasn't perfectly comfortable because I was afraid that the smell of tobacco might not be the incense that the puppy's little friends were accustomed to at their religious gatherings (. lA I 1/ / Al\ VV>K ^be Xittle people 35 r ^ and so I had planned not to smoke. True, I thoughtlessly- slapped my pocket, but I did not actually commit myself further than to take out my pouch, and that, you know, might have been almost anything. Now, if I'd taken my pipe out, or scratched a match, it would not have been so easy to have covered my retreat. However it was all wasted, for at least one observant pair of eyes was there and right well they knew that bag o' 'baccy, so with a sheepish grin (What's that, you didn't think a dog could grin? Much you know !) yes, with a sheepish grin — same grin in fact — ^he assured me that I might smoke all I chose as the blue clouds would curl up in the air and the fairies would not mind; but I must, as always, be very careful how I emptied my pipe and where I threw down blazing matches. He is no in- cendiary, you see. So I smoked and we both watched, and as I smoked and watched I reaUsed that it must be nearly fairy church time for the Oxford Quarters were being soiuided on the Canter- bury Bells and the congregation was fast gathering. The lady fairies were mostly dressed in lily white. Now please remember that I am a professional man and quite incapable of describing any fair lady's costume in detail. Indeed I am not always sure whether she has on a dress or a suit and as for telling the difference between a frock and a gown, please excuse me for I am sure that of this I know if possible less than the Dahli Lahma of Thibet. This much I will venture to say, however, that all of the charming ladies wore the 'T^ I J / yi I ¥> i: Zbc jfragrant IRote »ooFi / _^ \x\ ciinningest little lady's slippers imaginable; sometimes pink and sometimes yellow, sometimes one pink and one yellow ; and they did not wear gloves. This was undoubtedly by way of making a virtue of necessity, for they had no gloves to wear but only just mittens such as you and I had tied aroimd our necks when we were about their size. The fairies play that these are gloves, because fairies can play anything, and to carry out the game they call them gloves too, — just "little folk's gloves," or if they are in a hurry, "folk's gloves. " You see, we have it all wrong. We call 'em ^^ Fox gloves,^' because we don't know any better. Fancy a fox with gloves on! Upon careful thought I am prepared to say that the fairy ladies are no whit behind their human sisters in co- quetry. Every minx of them carries a little vanity bag from which she extracts a tiny Uttle Venus* s Looking-Glass and the cobwebbiest of handkerchiefs made out of Queen Anne's Lace. If nobody is looking they will dab the tips of their fimny little noses with a dainty puff from a milk weed which these little ladies carry as religiously as they do their sachet of fern seeds. / / \ ^ In general, a lady's head gear is quite as far beyond my homely descriptive powers as her garments, but with the lady fairies I found myself in luck, for nearly all of them on this occasion wore inverted petunias for hats, and one of the most chic of them all very obligingly explained to me that it was to be a petunia year, and she naively translated for ii Zbc Xittle people nV me a milliner's poem which she had clipped from the last copy of the "Fairies Glass of Fashion." It ran something like this: /^f / Petunias pink, petimias pied, With brims curled up Or brims spread wide; Petunias yours, petunias mine With pointed peak Like the columbine. Thus the milliner Nature For Fairies and Witches Makes up-to-date hats Which she pins not nor stitches. A \) ^ A Meanwhile the men fairies were clump-clumping up the mossy aisles in their Moccasins and seating themselves on camp stools and toad stools facing the pulpit in which the fairy minister, whom they very irreverently call '^Jack-in- the- Pulpit" was presently to appear. When quiet at last reigned Peter Pan who claims to be the fairies* orchestra, started the prelude on his pipes accompanied by the wind in the reeds down by the brook and by a band of cupids. The fairy cupids are just like human cupids. They all are little, — ahem, excuse me, — they all have little lyres, and so they join in the music of the fairy choir. After they had finished I suppose that by rights a fat and spectacled cater- / / 38 JLbc fragrant "Wote Booh .^. ^^ y/l pillar should have taken a few puffs on a hookah and then given sage advice for awhile, but I did not see Alice anywhere about so perhaps the caterpillar missed her too. Anyway, I' should never be like Alice, for perhaps you remember that "the caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence" and that I am sure I never could do. My currant bushes would resent it,i;^y^^ When Peter Pan and the reeds and cupids had finished their prelude, the Reverend John rose in his leafy bower to deliver the regular moral pabulum. The sermon was about fairy honour and the pastor assured his audience that it was just as wicked for a fairy to work off a lot of False Solomon's Seal on an unsuspecting botanist instead of real Solomon's Seal as it was to poison the fairy wells or move your neigh- bour's landmark. Reverend John pounded his natural green and red pulpit and wakened the echoes from his beautifully striped sounding board for some time and then a collection of fairy money was taken up by the beadle for the support of the home where they confine fairies whose nervous condition is too much on edge. This they call the "Home for the Edge-ed and Indignant Fairies." Puppy tells me that it is a most worthy charity. You see, Marcus Aurelius says that "Nature never does any mischief, " but the puppy, who himself is something of a philosopher and is far and away the better authority on fairies, disagrees with Marcus, holding that an edged or indignant fairy is a public menace and is just naturally full of mischief. ; >xy' K^ /I .*<^v \\ the Xtrtle l0eople 39 Now the congregation breaks up and we seem to be holding a levee, each little group of fairies politely coming up to say good-bye. I notice that immediately they have paid their courtesy each one pops something, apparently a fern seed, into his mouth, and, presto! he is gone like a puff of \ smoke. No, not altogether like a puff of smoke either, for when that goes even the puppy cannot follow it, while thisi disappearance which seems so complete to me, apparently hinders him not in the least. As for me, their transmutation is sufficiently marvellous to remind me of the boast of the Chamberlain in Henry IV and to wish that sometimes I too might "Have the receipt of fern-seed, to walk invisible." Cunning children of the wild, no wonder the puppy loves to / play with you. And each one, before leaving, has amicably tucked a sprig of forget-me-not into a hollow stump near me. I wonder if they remember the story of the Persian angel who fell in love, contrary to the angel laws, with a beautiful earthbom maiden who twined these little flowers in her hair! The guilty one was condemned to live in outer darkness until he and his love should plant forget-me-nots over the whole earth. The Persian story-tellers solemnly assure us that this was accomplished and that the happy pair were translated to heaven where, as in all good fairy tales, "they lived happy ever after." True or fancy, we shall need no forget-me- nots to keep our little fairy friends in mind. How dearly we should have loved to have peeped into those days described so graphically by the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales / / >v \ rv V jfragrant IRote and how pleasant must have been her thought of the le^§nd- ary time. 'Iw M' " In olde dayes of the King Arthoi ^ Of which thet Britons speken gret honour I Al was this lond ful filled of fayere.'' , Now what does this mean? Here is one of them back again, — the same little chap I noticed before, because he seems to be a fairy poUceman. He wears a little cap on his head which these folk call a "Thor's Cap" and we too called it the same until the early Christians dropped all their pagan names and it was changed to Monkshood. The diminutive policeman guards himself thus against evil, for very poison is the cap and very potent against spells. In his hand the guardian of the fairies' peace carries a tiny sword which I suppose he thinks a trenchant weapon, though I can hardly repress a smile as I recognise it as the gladiolus leaf that it is. His mission however is evidently one of friendly peace because if he has swallowed fern seed he has good-naturedly added later some other counteracting spell and remained visible. He tells me in very good English, though with the usual fairy accent, that he has been directed by Queen Mab to point out to me anything which I may consider of interest, and which is not forbidden by the censor. ' ^ Having seen my friends in peaceful churchgoing, I feel curious to know something more about their worldly side. u,< / The Httle policeman takes me to the aviation plant where I M ZTbe %\tttc people f*M \ am allowed to peep at the rows upon rows of monoplanes and bi-planes all ready for flight. The monoplanes look to me like winged maple seeds which indeed they are and the little guide assures me that they are the very latest and best models on the market for the especial use of small fairies and positively never have any engine troubles. The bi-planes are of course dragon-flies warranted to fly higher, straighter and farther, and make more noise on a given quantity of fuel than any other machine since the time of Darius Green. j I am next especially honoured by being taken to see the bodyguard of the queen. This doughty troop is composed entirely of Snap Dragons, There are young dragons, lusty and full of strength, and old dragons, toothless and gnarled; there are dragons uniformed in pink, dragons in red uniforms, dragons liveried in yellow and the royal guard of the person, resplendent in purple and white. Perhaps one cannot see them snapping, — I could not myself, — but one may rest assured that they are tried and true dragons and that they , snap loyally whenever occasion requires. i i By the time that we had finished inspecting the body- guard, the little policeman said that it was quarter of four and nearly tea time. I asked him how he knew and he said that the "fairy clocks" were nearly open. You see we call I *em four 6' clocks but they are the only watches the fairies have and the minute the little evening primroses begin to unfold the lady fairies run to get afternoon tea. When the tea is brewed in a fresh h'ttle pitcher plant and the fascinating i .^ 42 ZTbe Jfraoraht tioic little painted cups are all stood out in a row, then the good fairy house-wife picks a bright new bugle from the trumpet vine hanging over the door and calls her good-man to after- noon tea. They invited me to try it, but the painted cups were so small that I feared I should never know that I had had anything, besides which, I might unconsciously use up their whole supply of honey and cream. J I // Now tea is over and on we trudge, master in thought and dbg in joy. Does your puppy make these sudden wild dashes into the underbrush after nothing? Every dog seems to but that is only human stupidity. In reality they go on these inspiring side trips to speak with the little people who /beckon them. I am beginning to learn and am gradually classifying the fairies until now I can say with Scott : "If thou 'rt of air, let the grey mist fold thee; If of earth, let the swart mire hold thee; If a pixie, seek thy ring." ut while I am meditating, I am finally jogged and jostled into the realisation that his dogship has something more to record, and I am at last able to translate into manish what appeared to be \kL ^ THE puppy's approval ' I say, master, cross your heart. Don't you see how from the start Every word I said was true About the fairies; 'cause I knew ^T^^ \ \ H/ i \ \\c^ (f4 X JLht Xlttle people 43 1 Little dwarfs and funny gnomes c Using hollow stumps for homes, And cross-eyed sprites and elves with wings, And Oh, the weirdest lot of things. And I say, master, you're all right. The fairies saw that you were quite As harmless, kindly and compliant As they well could hope a giant. So we've had a glorious day. Made some friends, and now, I say How about our turning back Just as fast as we can track! Pup's all hollow, master dear, Knees all wobbly, feelin* queer; Awful hungry. How 'bout you? Does a man get hungry too? i Come on master, let's turn about Puppy's dry. Tongue's hangin' out. Hurry up master. Pup's most dead You'll come faster if I run ahead. \L / Well, well, coiild you resist that rascal! Not I. With him and through him, I have learned a lot this bright day and I can never again feel myself smugly complacent in / / / f V i / \ V , i i I \^ I yC 44 Zbc ifraoant mote »ooft J human superiority. That much puppy's friends and jack- in-the-pulpit*s congregation have taught me. Long enough has man thought himself high above all creation in every manner of intelligence. I will no longer believe it for This maketh that ther ben no fayeries." I"»««»."» I I \ \ Vkiiv HERA S MESSENGER SERVICE' "Iris all hues, roses and jessamine Rear'd high their flourish'd heads." Paradise Lost. ^f \ TO my mind the history and romance of the fleur-de-lys are quite as engaging as the beautiful blossoms them- ■w selves, and as years grow into years and colour after colour, shade after shade, and variety after variety are produced or discovered, so year after year we but come nearer and ever nearer to the possession of a true ** rainbow- flower, " for of course we must recognise the fact that this iris of which we think so highly is named from the classic Greek and signifies the bow which was stretched in the skies as a sign to Noah, the rainbow which never fails to call out our admiration. What we perhaps do not so readily call to mind is the no less interesting fact that Iris was, in Greek Mythology, the goddess of the rainbow and was traditionally charged with the duties of messenger. / ^ As the bow in the heavens which cheered Noah touched "This Chapter, together with Chapters I, II, VI, X, and XI, were separately copyrighted, 1915, by C. Arthur Coan. 45 if \ / / f: V ^^ // / / i 46 Zbc jfragrant IRote Book / I the vaulted sky at its zenith and seemed to come to earth at its nadir, so Iris, the peacock goddess of the rainbow- seemed celestially equipped to carry messages from the gods of heaven to the men of earth, and we constantly find her engaged on these junketing expeditions from Hera and Zeus to subjects of their mimdane realm. So much so indeed that the ancients symbolised her by the use of the talaria or ^( / 1 winged sandals and the caduceus or serpent-twined herald's rod of olive-wood, which were the recognised indices of Merciiry in his capacity of trusted messenger. j It is thus, with talaria and caduceus that we find her j ■ invoked by Homer any number of times, as when, in the Iliad, the trial by single combat had been arranged between ^ , Menelaus, king of Sparta and Pans, as a substitute for the battles between the Greeks and Trojans to decide the fate of Helen. Here fair Helen's presence is commanded thus: "Meantime to beauteous Helen, from the skies The various goddess of the rainbow flies, ... To whom the goddess of the painted bow (says) Approach and view the wondrous scene below." ^ That the divine Shakespeare was not above conveying the same idea in other form we have but to look a few pages through the historical plays to find Queen Margaret parting from Suffolk with the words, "Let me hear from thee, for wheresoe'er thou art in this world's globe I'll have an Iris that shall find thee out. "i_ .1.^ -\ v ! i m it i /// 7/J lbera'0 nDessenger Service /J^ \ \N 47 While Rome yet withstood to some extent, the barbarian hordes, old Clovis the son of Childeric, having permitted himself to get entangled with the Alemanni and finding his own people on the verge of a catastrophy, pledged himself to become one of the new sect called Christians if their god y could relieve the most pressing of his necessities. At this stage of the tradition obviously paganism intervenes, for the prayer of Clovis the pledged Christian is recognised rather by the gods of Olympus than by the single deity of the newer religion, and we see Clovis comforted by a message straight from heaven, conveyed as a message from heaven to earth- bom man had always been and would in mythology of ^/^ necessity be conveyed, by the customary Olympian messen- ger service, and we find Iris selected for the duty, with blue uniform, albeit without brass buttons or a blank receipt to be signed on the dotted line; but symbolising her position with less up-to-date crudeness and more romance by leaving in the hands of Clovis a branch of her own iris plant as a souvenir of the occasion. Either by way of keeping the pledge which he had made or merely for the good which he foresaw would come of it (being something of an oppor- tunist) Clovis embraced Christianity and the fleur-de-lys became an object of veneration to be made later on in the days of chivalry and true heraldic rules and laws, a part of the pride and blazon of France. Officially it first appears in an ordonnance of Louis le Jeune about 1 147 soon after which it is found as a very common charge in the arms of the ./" ^: y A I i tlbe fragrant Bote Booft knights of France and England and even of Germany, "where every gentleman of coat-armour desired to adorn his shield with a loan from the shield of France. " An examina- tion of the old records of the heralds of Europe readily confirms the frequency with which this occurred. At first the symbol appeared upon a field of blue spread over recklessly with the fieur-de-lys in gold ("d'azur, seme de fleurs-de-lys d*or"). The blazon of the royal arms was finally reduced by Charles the Fifth of France in 1376 to a form wherein it was no longer seme, but should be borne "d'azur, ^ trois fleurs-de-lys d'or." |\ | And oh! the pretty legends of early folk-lore which tell us of this charming flower; of how an ancient Frankish king and every early Louis succeeding him did, out of respect to this old tradition of Clovis, use a reed of iris at his corona- tion instead of the mystic sceptre; of how fair maids were sought and fields were won ; of how traitors were shamed and Justice was done, in the name of the Lilies of France. But other flowers wait, other legends call, our way is slow, and eeds must that we should "Jog on, jog on, the foot-path-way, And merrily hent the stile-a; A merry heart goes all the day, — Your sad tires in a mile-a." \\ \ THE MORN OF A THOUSAND ROSES 'I sing of Brooks, of Blossoms, Birds and Bowers; Of April, May, of June and July Flowers. . . . I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I write / How Roses first came Red, and Lillies White. (Herrick, Hesperides.) AND SO, though we may not indeed all be Herricks, we may surely all sing of brooks and blossoms, birds and bowers, — may in sooth, like Herrick, live the gospel of out-doors, and seek why the rose is red, why white the lily. And had I all the flowers that heart could wish, I think that I should still divide them into only two classes: "Roses," and " Not-Roses. " There is such a glorious largess about the first spring bounty, such a sweet and colourful assurance in each succeeding month, and such a trustful audacity in the buds which dare the very frosts of winter! \ And nothing neatly prim about Miss Rosa. White she can be. White as a bride for Purity; or Red, red as Love. Pink she can be, Pink as Beauty, Pink as the very pink of Mercutio's Courtesy or Yellow, yellow as "Jealousy, the jaundice of the Soul." Nor coward she, supine and 49 |-\ \-'^-f^ NJ V /\ 50 Zbc ifragrant Bote Boofe meek, for Rights hath the rose and knows it; A thom hath the rose and shows it. Yes, to me the rose is in a class by itself, nor am I alone in this, since, before Columbus plowe the Main, old poet Dunbar dared set the rose apart, " Nor hald non udir flouer in sic denty (favour) As the fresche Rois, of CoUour reid and quhyte (white). And even Spenser, great author of the Faerie-Queen could find it in his heart to add only the lily to the rose in decking the bridal bower, k ^^*^"Vi ^\l l^ l/y ' 1/ " And let them also with them bring in hand For my f ayre love, of lillyes and of roses. Bound truelove wize, with a blew silke riband. And let them make great store of bridal posies And let them e'ek bring store of other fiowerSyJi^f^ To deck the bridale bowers." o-O A j Now, note you well, — "And let them e*ek bring store of lather flowers,** — ^just "other flowers." Mighty religious is she too on occasion, if one is to judge by the traditions of the East where, on Mount Calasay, the Hindu Olympus, we are told that there stands a table upon which lies a silver rose, bearing among its petals the two y holy servants of the Most High, whose duty it is to "Praise God without ceasing." If again we turn, this time to Mahommedan tradition, we find that when Mahomet took his famous all-night flight through Heaven from Mecca borne aloft on the back of the supernatural steed Al Borak fci V K, / n>orn of a xn^ousattb IRosee alighting next morning on the Kubbet es Sakra in Jerusalem, from the sacred sweat of the Prophet's forehead falling to earth, sprang white roses, while from the magic sweat of Al Borak, yellow roses came. Question a reverent Moslem about this and his answer will be the same to you that it was to me, for it never varies. He will lift his eyebrows with surprise and ask, "Why not !" Why not, indeed! And contrary she is, this beautiful minx. She will cry you war or cry you peace, stand emblem for heathen Aphro- dite and Christian Mary in the same breath and with the same sang-froid with which she presents a bud and a thorn on the selfsame branch. That Venus is frequently sym- bolised by the rose is too well recognised to require more than passing mention, and that the rose is as much Mary's flower as blue is the symbolic colour for her cloak. Are you a Modem? The rose is for beauty. Does not Lord Tennyson make his lover say in "Maud" " Rosy is the west, rosy is the south; Roses are her cheeks, and a rose her mouth." But then, again, are you an Ancient, a very solemn and sanctified Ancient? If so, do we not find Confucius discuss- ing in the Analects, questions of beauty, and quoting such very un-Confucian lines as these : " Dimples playing in a witching smile, Beautiful eyes, so dark, so bright! Oh, and her face may be thought the while Coloured by art, red rose on white!" / \ \ x i % iL i A \ 1 t k.^1 k LJU. ■//IJ h] \ \\ 't\ I /?^ ZTbe jfraarant Bote Booft And Confucius, the founder of a religion, the head of a dig- nified and nearly permanent philosophy! Shades of ancient China! \W i^>^f ■ Have you secrets to discuss? Allow me to remind you that the rose has from time immemorial been recognised as ^ the symbol of silence. Dean Swift, you will recollect, assures ' L the Distressed Weavers that, sub-rosa, all is safe, and admits that "Under the rose, since here are none but friends, To own the truth, we have some private ends." Beauty and secrecy bound up together. What a com- bination! Beauty and fragrance and love and discretion all m one gift from nature. Whatever meaning may be ascribed to roses white, to roses pink or yellow, we know that with each of us as with Bums, "My love is like a red, red rose," and all the whole world round the vehement blush of the red rose kindles new hymns to Venus. Do not ask me why nature should have decreed that certain chords be responsive to designated colours. As easily tell how roses first came red, why white the lily; and you will remember that while Herrick sang of these things he never really did tell how. That was left to the little girl in Wonderland. Do you remember the visit Alice made to the Queen of Hearts and what she saw j in the Croquet Grounds? | j A Large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden; the roses growing on it were white, but there were three rvi \ =^=^\i V Amiw A flDorn of a TTboueanb "Koaee 53 gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very ciirious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them, she heard one of them say, "Look out now. Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!" . . . "Would you tell me please," said Alice, a little timidly, " why you are painting those roses? " Five and Seven said nothing but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, "Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree and we put in a white one by mistake, and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So, you see. Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes. " So it seems that in Wonderland, when they made a mis- take all that they had to do was to wash it out or paint it over. Nothing, it would seem, in that fair country of dreams was indelible. How very different it is in life, where we can never expect figs of thistles or as the old Hindu fable quaintly put it many hundreds of years before Christ, "He that plants j^ij',^ a thorn bush must never expect to gather roses." Such a land of poesy was that India of old, which they even called >v "Jambudvipa, the Land of the Rose-apple Tree." if she is Beauty and Love, so is she War and Strife. Omar Khayyam says: " I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose, as where some buried Caesar bled. And, true to her reputation for spice and variety, when Mistress Rose cries "War," beware of her. She plays no fair game of war, nor shims she to fight on both sides at once, -:^ry^ Vl\\[ y/ft V I / V/J 54 \ ^be ifraorant IRote Booft traitor to each. Did Bolingbroke's Lancastrians choose a red rose to cheer them on to war, so instantly chose York a white rose to prove its cause stainless and to make the War of the Roses a royal one. Did a gentleman of Henry's Court present a white rose to one of the fair ladies, to whom of course it was a badge of enmity, he must soften it by some such flattering message as history hands down, where the gallant wished that ^^J Vy^^' , Y Yi " If this fair rose offend thy sight It in thy bosom wear; Twill blush to find itself less white, And turn Lancastrian there." > But if, as it is said, "Hard words break no bones, " s sweet nothings cure no wars, and Rose did not cease to fight Rose until Henry Richmond of the Lancastrian "Red" married EUzabeth Mortimer of the York "While" and so peace perched at last on the Tudor banner and compromised the colour scheme by joining both roses in the royal standard of the new dynasty as we see them carved in enduring stone in Henry's chapel at Westminster, " Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? Alas that Spring should vanish with the Rose That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang Ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows! " \? I .^ I ^M THE FOUR WINDS OF HEAVEN X^ . {\ AVING alluded even m the most cursory way im- aginable to the four winds of heaven at the time of writing "The Garden Gate" the persistent Muse Vould not let me rest until Aeolus and his four chief subjects had taken substantial form in The Fragrant Note Book. It will of course be remembered that Aeolus, the wind god, reigned over Boreas, the North Wind, Zephyrus, the West Wind, Auster, the South Wind and Euros, the East Wind. Aeolus made his home in a cave among the crags on Mount Stromboli thereby giving his name to the group of islands of which Stromboli is one and which are called the Aeolian ^ Islands to this day. Aeolus' Lyre is of course the familiar Aeolian Harp or string stretched to sing with the wind. The assignment of seasons to the several winds as here adopted is in accordance with mythological habit rather than local conditions. In many climes the East Wind prevails in spring and the West Wind in the autumn, but one would hardly break in upon the old myths for an ephemeral whim, nor would the truth be the same everywhere in any event. For the legendary order used we might find pretty confirma- 55 .\i2^ I ^ f X Nw I i 56 "^^-xrA j£f)c fragrant IRote Bboft tion by going either to Greece or to Rome. In the former, we may view the still beautiful Athenian Tower of the Winds, where we see Boreas, an old man, mujffled to the chin. Zephyr, .^ O X a vernal lad shaking spring flowers over the earth, and ^ ^*^ Euros, aged and enveloped against November's storms. In Rome, we may listen to Virgil's flowing lines, f " While yet the spring is young, while earth unbinds >^ "Sr-^Her frozen bosom to the western winds; yy While mountain snows dissolve against the sun. And streams yet new, from precipices run; E'en in this early dawning of the year, _^ Produce the plow, and yoke the sturdy steer." ' It is hardly necessary to refer to the mad attempt of Phaeton to drive his father's sun-chariot through the sky or to the pretty myth giving Zephyr the wings of a butterfly with which he is enabled to brush the overheated cheeks of his flower children during the blazing months of growth and fruitfulness. \ THE FOUR WINDS OF HEAVEN' » To Aeolus the Wind God \ f Aeolus, sound us now thy ringing horn. ^ Zephyr's master, come, salute the morn Merry be thy tune whate'er the day Sullen winter noon or balmy May, — BUnd, mad-cap loon, changeable and gay, Wynd thy horn. ' Copyrighted, 191 6, C. Arthur Coan. A JLhc font M!nb0 of Ibeaven Four children of the Dawn, Starlight begot ; To each a share of Heaven did Jove allot. One North, one East, one Southward and one West Bring want or feast, bring weariness or rest Or care surceased at thy delayed behest. I f^ Wynd thy horn. // Up, crackbrain! Art thou sleeping in thy cave Aweary of the tasks Olympus gave? Boreas' Sire, rest thou not on fame ; Blow bright the fire, — fan inspiration's flame; Re-string thy Lyre, new songs to proclaim. Wynd thy horn! THE NORTH WIND's REPLY Aeolus* voice I heard, calh'ng from Stromboli. Lo, at his lightest word, out of the ice came I j 1 Rushing in headlong flights Straight from my lair, On through my Arctic nights Freezing the air. Driving my Northern Lights. Who else would dare? Of Came I then riotous, clasping the hand of Death i* Recking no consequence, blasting with chilly breath; ./. M \ k \-ws^ Zhc jfragrant IRote Book Flinging my witch dances Up in the sky ; Hurling my ice-lances T Down from on high ; Seizing on wing, chances Death's trade to ply. Fearful the blast I drew hence in my medley train Winter's wild work to do through all his deadly reign. Change now in all I see, Winter is dead, — No more a king is he. Boreas fled. Beaten at last are we,~ oring reigns insteg^d THE COMING OF THE WEST WIND Spring "'v. i/ Slowly, warily, peeps the great orb Over the rim of the dawn. Yawning in luxury, stretches his arms Tracing his course in the sky. Climbing resplendent his ladder of gold As gently young Zephyr comes crooning. Wind of the West, Wind of the Spring, Playmate of sun and of rain. / JLhe four TOinDe of t)eaven Blowing to tatters the lace-robe of mist Slipped from the shoulders of Night, Joy in the breath of ye, — ^Wine in the veins of ye, Life, and a new ^/t^^V ^^'^ \ Resurrection. // VI fv^ THE BREATH OF AUSTER, THE SOUTH WIND // Z Summer A chanot swift for every god. To Phoebus' car, soaring far Cling I,— the South Wind. y ^ Hot the morning, burning the noon, Y j / Yet must I cling and swing A f Sucked on by the tongue of the flame. ^ Whirling we fly Phoebus and I ^ Challenging Heaven Burning the sky. Ah, Spring so green I'll scorch thy sheen With a breath to remember. Too reckless even for the gods, See Phaeton cast to Earth at last His chariot a-smoulder. Quickly now to escape flee I 1 (ji-^^'^F^^ Zbc fragrant 1Rote Sooft Madly I caper, Light as a vapour Gather I here a dark'ning storm And whisk it away again A Smiling. Shaking the aspens to waken the mom Searing the Zenith to ripen the corn, Now when the South Wind is going to sleep You shall hear the bees hum You shall hear crickets drum As the cool sun sinks Into the night. THE SONG OF EUROS, THE EAST WIND i II' r Autumn High in the still, early air hangs the lark. A hot day. A hot day. The katydids are clicking, — The bats come /\ A hot day. A hot day. All golden brown and ripe f I The smiling harvest sways And bends to Euros' pipe And swings to Autumn's lays. A hot day. A hot day. =^^^\i ZTbe jfour iKIlinbe of Ibeaven 6i The harvest's all garnered, — The cider's all pressed. At sunset. At sunset. U^^ The gauze-wings of Zephyr fan cool from the west V, At sunset. At sunset. The daylight soft has fled, The breezes now are gone, The seasons all have sped, • / rfl The four winds' work is done, ^^y At sunset. At sunset. / / 3rx '/A i B i J i \ I \\ fhas come to^ss tliat great-grandmamma is an old fashioned person. Were it not for her sweet vitality we j should almost say hopelessly old-fashioned ; but great- ""grandmamma could not conceivably be hopelessly anything and the dear old flowers into which we shall form a posy for her shall be the ones she loved in her early Victorian girl- hood,— old-time lavender and verbenas and dahhas, petunias and heliotrope, with thyme and rue and marjoram not far away. You will remember that in the older and courtlier days of the past, when hardly a belted knight of them all could so much as sign his name, oratory and a certain rough poesy were talents cultivated by gentlemen almost without excep- tion ; and so they made rhymes and acrostics which one could remember without writing, and so again they chose a flower or a precious stone as a symbol of each initial and formed posies and posy rings for their true loves; and though, as down through the centuries the gentry gradually acquired the rule of three and the art of writing, yet no one need doubt 62 ^c^ w "' (5teat^(5rartbain*6 1^6^ that great-grandam, even as late as her day, had posies , galore written to her. These however shall not be the only ones. We will for ourselves pen one in her honour. Can you not see the dear old lady, wearing perhaps her cap and her lace mitts, with mischief in her eyes, sedately strolling amongst her pets? ^ '^ Geraniums fragrant, white and pinkj Rosemary, memory's surest link, Alyssum sweet and tender. Nasturtiums neat and slender, \ Dahlias, guarding the pool's green brink, Arabis spreading o'er the groimd. Mignonette and phlox abound. Sage and spicy herbs all 'round; \ ^/Picture thus on sunny days \ Or at even's shadow, then ^^V / /Slowly down the bordered ways ^^T I Yonder grandam comes again. One cannot think of flowers as hopelessly old-fashioned any more than one can imagine great-grandam as out of place or really behind the times. It is all just as Marcus Aurelius put it when he had the government of Imperial Rome on his shoulders: ' / / \ \ ( ( " Grapes are first sour, then ripe, then raisins. These are all no more than bare alterations, not into nothing, \ but into something which does not appear at present." / 1 •e- \ / 64 ^\ ttbe ifraatant IRote Book Not long ago fashion decreed the dahlia out of date. Retire the dahlia. Now fashion proclaims the dahlia all the rage. Enter again the dahlia in myriad forms. And the real ^ joke on Dame Nature is in the fact that the dahlia was by no means ancient enough to have been relegated to the kitchen garden when the fiat went forth, being then among the very recent importations which had been brought in to grace our gardens only a bare Ufetime before it was exiled as antiquated. Small blame that it now threatens to take ample vengeance in popularity for its years of unjust! retirement. | . , f r^ » ' "And, e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy." One cannot look at the flowers of long ago without thinking of poor, imhappy, demented Ophelia. How gently she would have strayed through our garden of the past, where she would have found many of the flowers that went to form her nosegay. "There's rosemary, that's for remem brance ; Pray you, love, remember ; and there is pansies for thoughts. . . . There's fennel for you and columbines ; there's rue for you and here's some for me. " And grandam ^ you see is old enough to have remembrances and human / enough to have long since planted her little space of rue / Dr remem- y j 5ies, that's / / liimhinf^s? f which the dear soul knew as Ophelia did before her, meant / repentance. So for her tender little sins she planted a tender I little bed of repentance 1 1 ) (Breat^Cranbam's posp 65 Along with her rosemary, her rue and her mint, bitter herb of the Pascal Feast, we shall find that our sweet old lady has planted the nodding lavender, quaint and redolent of clothes presses hospitably filled with generous Hnen. Flowers, it would seem, are sometimes strangely like persons, and \y^-'''^''^\ quite capable of rising, unlike a stream, above their sources and being as it were superior to circumstance. Lavender is surely one of these ; having been known in the long ago simply as the laundry flower, lavender to us now means, equally the blossoms themselves, the perfume and the colour which have in turn received names from the nameless one. To think of dahlias and rosemary and lavender is to be certain that the flower borders of this quiet garden will be made of peonies; and we shall wonder whether, after aU, with all their varieties and hybrids today, we really love our peonies more than grandam has hers, or whether these modem marvels, better than their plainer ones, typify Olympian Apollo, the first Paeon and the songs of health and victory which were raised in his honour and name as physician extraordinary to the gods. And just over there, beyond the healing peonies come look with me, for " I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," while all along the way we shall find the sweet heliotrope which perhaps we credit as we do the sunflower, with a bit more constancy than is its due. Here again we find flowers 7 x^ N ^be fragrant IRote IBooJx / m very like humans, sharing many of their faults and foibles. *"Tis an observation," you will remember, "of flatterers that they are like the heHo trope; they open only towards the sun, but shut and contract themselves in cloudy weather." And this you see has brought us to the far corner of our- old-fashioned garden where we may walk "by a cornfield's side aflutter with poppies" in the midst of which it is easy to imagine the ancient goddess Ceres, a tall and willowy lady, carrying in her right hand the blazing poppies which are her emblem and which she seems just to have plucked fresh from grandam's garden. How clear a type of the world in general may we find in this flaming flower as she lavishly furnishes us with her beauty, sustenance or a purgatory for our choice. Which do we take, — the unrivalled brilliance of' her blossom, the nutriment of her innocent and palatable oil, or the desolating scourge of her opiuni gum? She offers them all with equally smiling grace, leaving man to make his wise or foolish selection with the right to bless or curse himself as he will. Chaste beauty is his for the taking ^' Like a white poppy sinking on the plain Whose heavy head is overcharged with rain," Or, being in worse estate, he may consort with the grass- hopper of whom Lovelace satirically says "when his poppy works, then he must retire to his carved acorn bed to lie." All flowers thus have good in them, and some a little evil; but highland or lowland, grandam loves each with enduring \ .r »-_v i \ ''-%, 6reat-«6ranbam'0 p06^ fervour, being partial, if at all, to those cherished blossoms of good omen. And her heart went out to the young prince of the East singing so sweetly to his Bidasari, for he too chose a flower of good omen when he said to his Httle love,/ "Thou art a jasmine sweet, an antidote to every ill. "^ '^y I Now in addition to being a tender-hearted and lovable person, she is a wise as well and, o' winter nights dotes on the philosophic saws and sayings of old Confucius and smiles her kindly and winning smile over the pretty concepts which he so laboriously collected. Many a time, after the winter had fled and the scent of the marshlands was in the air I have heard her murmiu: with the Shi King: " All around the marshes shores are seen \ \ / / Valerian flowers and rushes green." just as we might be doing this moment, for here in the hollow both are waving at us, tender rushes and bright valerian, which another philosopher tartly describes in the language of his day as "the calmer of hysterical squirms, " a description which I daresay would startle great-grandam out of her five staid senses. For herself. Biblical associa-\ tions are always of the strongest, and she treasures the valerian as a sacred first cousin of the spikenard, that precious perfiune and ointment of the holy book, and thus she links her cosy garden with the great world outside. Thus she sees the wild hyssop "which springeth from the wall; in every sprig of verbena; and no Druid sitting with sombre -cC?' ^.^ 68 ^be ifraarant IRote Boof? /) visage in the mystic circle of Stonehenge tended the ver- benas in his garden of love philters with more ceaseless care than she gives to hers here in its quiet comer. It is almost the last flower we shall pause before in her garden and we turn away thinking tenderly of the dear old charmer and her dear old verbenas, put where she should always see them, partly because they were they and partly to call to her mind sweet days of Venice, with its melodious calls coming from gondoHer to wall and back again; for verbenas and Venice must always run together in mind if you had known and loved them together as one and inseparable. >»A j i "A Saint-Blaise, k la Zuecca, Dans les pr^s fleuris cueillir la verveine; A Saint-Blaise, k la Zuecca, * Vivre et mourir 1^." \^*^ ^(\( rS HEDGEROWS AND HILLOCKS GREEN ' Some time walking, not unseen, By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate Where the great sun begins his state Robed in flame and amber light." L'AUegro. EVEN in the gay days of Charles I there could be found this one man of prominence who loved the eternal out-of-doors and who had seen the great sun begin his state robed in flame and amber light frequently enough to warrant his writing lines about it. Lines they were which carry their appeal down through all of the years and pull at our heart-strings today. How few of the gallants of Milton's day could say that they had seen as much ; imless perchance they saw a dizzy sunrise by accident at the close of an all night's revel. But as the days passed and kings and governments passed with them, the wanton surroundings of royalty giving place to austere Cromwellism, one may picture many of the foremost men of state as watching the sim right against the eastern gate; and as Milton's ej'-esight failed him and he had only memories and that marvellously 69 li\ / I ■Ya ttbc fragrant "Mote JBool? \ /\\.?7 7 w / II stored brain upon which to call, how often must he have ^ framed thanksgivings for those hours spent in the hedgerows. /\' History, it is said, repeats herself, and we shall not have ^' \ \ far to go before we find another royal court where time, as Young sweetly puts it, was "elaborately thrown away," a court where Parisian Louis and Viennese Marie held sway. Can we not see the dainty little queen like a pink and blue x ( I Tanagra figurine, ruling her helpless colony of shepherds and shepherdesses, devising quaint games and ingenious pastimes to while away the unvalued hours. Then of a summer's night it developed that not one of the company, not one useless little shepherd or milk-maid of them all had ever seen the sun rise; and imagine their consternation when the queen invited — nay, commanded — all to attend the next morning's performance! Poor shepherds ! Poor queen! Few enough suns they saw thereafter, and little good their masques and fnvolities brought them. The memories of a blind Milton were better worth. Let us follow this path which leads along the hedge- rows and over the hillocks green where the harvest of wheat grows in the fields and a harvest of flowers in the neglected by-paths and comers. Here seems to stalk a bearded, X venerable and benevolent Moses, laying down laws for his people; laws for ceremonial religion; laws of hygiene; poHti- cal rules, and rules economic. Here we shall see him in- spired by a God ever thoughtful for the poor and resenting waste which could be turned to their account; and by his / I ? / / ^. k the aim-socialist of this ' // // 1f>^^octow0 ant) 1bUIocft0 inspiration laying down a new and beneficent ordinance on their behalf. We have not altogether forgotten it even in this sordid and hurrying day. ^"*^^>**V^^\\ \ \ " And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. ^v\ And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard ; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the^tranger : I am the Lord your God." How that doctrine would shock barbed- wire generation ! Now I trust that you sweet friend are not poor nor shall you and I be quite strangers, yet may we find many choice things awaiting us in these Levitical comers of the ungleaned fields. So walk with me, I'd talk with thee, of things which were and are to be; of woods and nooks and pools and brooks ; of this to hear and that to see. Some of our treasures have waited coimtless ages to greet us and some fade with the waning sun, but I never think of them as differing in idtimate importance or in abstract ■*»--^,^ beauty and I am sure that nature wishes us to feel that, "In the world's audience halls the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeam and the stars at midnight." Many, many will be the things which we shall be permitted \ y to see, and many, many will be those which on this trip will escape us, only to be at hand with their charm next time we come; and we shall love them, every tender one, learn to call NfA/ // . , . ^ \ ^be fragrant 1Rote Booft them all by name. Such a list as it will be and how better to begin than in the olden way, / |V "The primrose placing first, because that in the spring \ X It is the first appears, then only flourishing. " Sweet primrose, come and gone so soon. Is it this short- Hved beauty that has so often condemned so dainty a flower to be sung as irresponsible. Preaching Laertes, who perhaps "himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and recks not his own rede" was doubtless neither better nor worse in this than blundering Peter Bell, so tmappreciative and obUvious to all the subtlety of spring that, \ \ ( \ \ f "A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more. " What a pity so sordid, prosy and blunt a realist cannot sit at the feet of Puck's companions and slough off such a blindness! Dares a Peter Bell of Hiram Clodd make mid- night tryst with a woodland fay? Trust them to find a way to open dull human eyes, and to great lengths have they gone to enlighten us ! What things we always learn, what sights we see, what songs we shall hear when we sit at the feet of the fairies, out of bounds, where "the field hath eyen and the wood hath ears." \ \\ \ yj\ But a sound of merry-making comes over the hedge. I hear a dog bark and the cheery laugh of young girls. April, which a short hour ago was "coming up the hill, " is past and / \l ■^"tl"-" Ibcbgcrows an& ftlllocfts \j /Vo w gone and bright May has taken her place. Through this break in the hedgerow let us softly slip over to the bench yonder, where we see / V ^ f jl j " The hawthorne bush, with seats beneath the shade . For talking age and whispering lovers made. " f Here's the day of good Queen Bess come back, sure as ever was. Here are doughty lads and blushing maids, harlequin hose and ribban'd braids, dark and fair and joy- ous. Here are long-high hats and short-square hats and ribban'd calves as well as braids, and the rich and pleasant smell from the community cook stalls as of one great town- ship-doughnut being browned for the common need in the open. Now the old fiddler starts twanging away on a for- gotten folk-dance and laughing and singing the motley crowd spin away over the green. Times and places there may have been when custom required that "Jack should pipe and Jill should dance," but here the scene is a prettier one for hand in hand, up the field and back again, they tread the green together, jj^y^^ ^^ " When the merry bells ring round. And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the checkered shade; And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holyday. " _^:_ rv Elizabeth, royal daughter of Henry, Defender of the Faith! Have you any doubt that if her gracious majesty \ \r Xi i 1/ / \~ ^ h f 74 Vat fragrant IRote 3Booh / SO long since gone were given a choice, she would far prefer to be remembered as " Good Queen Bess." Long gone is she and long gone also her May dances. Not soon again shall we hear the merry crowd shout "The Pole is up! The Pole is up." The pole alas is down, the hobby horses frayed andl"'^ torn, the witch's wands and magic hoods are cast away, the masks and mummery shabby and forgotten, and only memories are fresh and green and free from Time's destmction. i^^^^ ^' ^^^ f / //^Z " What's not devoured by Time's devouring hand? / Where's Troy, and where's the May Pole in the Strand? " Troy's scarce more lost, alas, than the may pole in the Strand, 4)ut if the pole's down, the shabby hobby-horses are thrown aside and the rebeck hushed, thanks be that the old spirit has not altogether vanished from the land. Still in rural faith we seek favours in the four-leaved clover, still shy lassies test their fortunes in the falling petals of the daisy while breathless with anxiety they murmur, // " One I love; two I love; three I love I say, Four I love with all my heart and five I cast away." ^ "Superstitious," you say. Oh! Bother a meddling realist. Have you no heart, reader? Yes, superstitions, if you like, but such pretty, harmless little ones with an old- world air clinging about them. Besides, if you are a man now, were you never a lad once all a-tremble lest the flower- verdict be, "Five, I cast away?" Or be you never so silver- \ ^^ 1bet)gerow0 anb Iblllocfta 75 haired and dignified a dame as you sit and complacently read, were you never guilty — Oh, ages ago — of weakly tossing poor innocent marguerite away when you foresaw ^ that she had it in her mind to proclaim long before you were ready to admit it, "Seven, She loves," or maybe, "Eight, They both love. " Come now, be honest; doesn't it even now thrill you the least Httle bit in the world and carry you back to the sacred days of "Rich man. Poor man. Beggar man, Thief," and haunt you with memories of "London Bridge is Falling Down, " and other classics ? In the days of long ago when knights were bold and Saxon love was both young and strong, our little bright-petalled, yellow-eyed friend had not so many to contest with her the honours of the hour. Before Shakespeare wrote a Hne, — and there was such a time you see, hard as it is to believe, — gardens were as few as sidewalks, but every field and wood smiled with flowers to be loved and stmg by the Chaucers and Spensers and Lovelaces of their day; and among these gifts of Flora we find our little favourite more than once lauded high above its mates. t / // ; I > ** That well by reason men it call may The dayesye or elles the eye of day The emperice and flour of flowers alle." r1\/ Granted, one must not expect everything to remain unchanged. It would be but an unsuitable world today, for we are well warned that, "he who has not the spirit of his age, 1 v^ I L > t \ \ ihht \X 76 Zl)C ifraorant IRote IBcfd has all its unhappiness. " Yet it is refreshing to realize that even a flower may rear its charming head generation after generation with less change than man makes around it. Since the old days at Tabard when poets held dayesye in such ^ high esteem, how have styles changed; how have weeds become flowers and flowers alas seemed weeds and the generous English daisy not the least of these. Danger challenges when flower or fruit, nature or man spreads bounty with too lavish a plenteousness. Generosity is almost the surest road to disparagement in this imapprecia- tive world, where even Boswell could tell us of the great man who "was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it." How aptly might this be said of the daisy in its long years of later neglect! But a pendulum which swings over will in due course come swinging back, and styles which change once shall in the end change once again. So it has been with this flower of the hedgerows which is come into its own even as Wordsworth insisted that it would. / / A Trr ( *' Child of the Year! that round dost run Thy pleasant course, — when day's begun As ready to salute the sun As lark or leveret. Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; Nor be less dear to future men Than in old time; — thou not in vain Art Nature's favourite." 7 % I "*v 1 I ■tiV\irKLvviM 1bebgerow6 an^ Iblllocka n I So here we have them again in our fields and in our gardens. Daisies pink and daisies white; daisies small, large and middling ; old-fashioned daisies and daisies with ponder- ous new-fangled names. Yea, the daisy has come back, with her sisters and her cousins and her aunts and we have welcomed them and naturalised them and segregated them and pictured them and sung them, sometimes alone but more often "higglety-pigglety, " Hke Katrina Van Tassel's famous supper. ,^ I j " Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall; When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses And dance with the cuckoo-buds slender and tall." Here Hes the world spread out before us, inviting further strolls, and all nature seems arrayed to gratify us. She may not, it is true, dress up especially for our benefit but never- theless, as Emerson says, she "cannot be surprised in tm- dress, — beauty breaks in everywhere." If the hedgerows are full of flowers, the hillocks are green and full of sunshine ; and it is good to walk in the glow and feel the soft turf under foot; good to hear the birds in the branches and the comfort- able cattle lowing in the meadow; good to watch the impu- dent chipmimk scolding indulgent nature over a wormy chestnut; good to feel a dog's wet muzzle against your hand; good to be a free man in a free world and to walk 'till rest is grateful. It is good \ I \ \ \ /^ «^'vy- li^ I \Y/) 78 X Zbe fragrant IRote Booft Air- "To halt at the chattering brook in the tall green fern at the brink -:;^\ \ // / y ^..i,-^ V, \ Where the hafebell grows, arid the gorse and the foxgloves purple and white." But we cannot cease to think of flowers even while we take our lazy minute on the grass. How glibly we gabble their names without perhaps always stopping to think if they °*\ \ link us with other times and other peoples. Some change \ their names, and some prefer to float along forever with the brook, bearing a loved or feared appellation of old. Pick yonder tall and commanding yarrow. You are stately, Yarrow, but I should hardly think of Iliad days and you X I together. Why then do you call yourself Achillea, pre- ^ sumptuous plant, and what had you to do with Achilles? What was your name, bold one, before the scourge of Hector stumbled over you? And did Achilles, tender as well as strong, reallj'- steep your juices to cure grievously stricken Telephus, son of Heracles? Small hope we shall ever know, but "so the legend runneth, so the old men tell," and yarrow is Achillea to this day, claiming the deed of healing and holding high head topping many another more attrac- tive wayside flower. y^ \ \ y/ Crowding even yarrow for space and prominence, pushing small and weak things into the dusty road's edge, I see another imperious plant that claims by nature and lineage the right to lord it over its fellows. Beautiful, and with such a sweet and amiable temper, "Touch and I pierce, " says the ^A. \// I /^. / N^\) ^ // (lii/:^ ^f^ 1be^aerow0 a^^ l)llIocli6 purple thistle in all its glory, conscious of royal descent. For long centuries it has been the emblem of the mighty Scot and frankly proud of a quartering on the shield of a great empire. Very good type of life is the scratchy thing, , too. Daring itself, and shouting from every thorny stem its\\ *' Nemo me impune lacessit,** it can be impressed only by daring in turn and only by boldness overcome. " Tender handed stroke a nettle, \ \ And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of metal, And it soft as silk remains.' ^\1 ] Yarrow and thistles may command attention but hardly love such as we give to the fragrant clover bordering every quiet path along our way, and should St. Patrick now visit our hillocks green he would find its trefoil leaves ever at hand and quite as prettily adapted to the expounding of the doctrine of the Trinity as the seamrag beloved of Ireland ; but St. Patrick like many other grand old patriarchs is folded in Abraham's bosom, and little enough think we of doctrines or sermons unless we find them in the stones, and slow enough are we to draw a moral or love a moraUser, so let us leave the clover spreading ever thicker over the field and glance at this cumberer of the ground. How beautiful are the velvet leaves of the downy midlein plant and how sincerely we have always admired it, but even the mullein has had its day and without it many a candle in the ancient ingle-nook would have been wickless and spineless and useless, and many a aV^//'/^ . , ^be jfragrant flote'lliSook Pilgrim's winter evening dark and dreary. Can you not see a busy Priscilla storing up mullein stalks against the day in the autumn when she will dip them one by one into that generous "^ \ pot of boiling tallow and make her indispensable supply of hag- tapers to light John Alden on his way? It is always so. Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. The mullein which was once in such high esteem, now we see trodden tinder foot, its usefulness forgotten. ^ / PV X^^ Now we come to a parting in the woodland paths. If we ^o to the right, the left will call and if the left we take, what will the right hide? Which has the truer heart to guide us, the shifting compass or the stubborn sign-post, nailed to yonder stubborn oak; compass ever trembling uncertainly but ever true to its distant star, or grim signpost, immovable as a surveyor's landmark and probably right, but, also, possibly wrong. Signposts are not unlike people, the more set they are the more often wrong. This one looks wonder- fully "stiff in his opinions." Certainly I doubt if his moral standing equals his physical rectitude. Let us be guided by the swinging compass needle and come with me over here where you may smile with me on my compass of the hedge- rows and my timepieces of the hillocks green, — my Clytie flowers. • K i I / You will remember Clytie. She was a dainty little nymph and Uke so many other ladies of old, sad, oh, sad to tell, she fell in love with Apollo. And did Apollo fall in love with her in turn? Well for gallantry's sake let us hope so, /] K 1bebgerow6 anb Iblllochs but in any event Clytie's aspirations met with no Olympic approval and legend tells us that morning after morning and day after day she watched her god making his round of the sky until at last she was turned into a flower to punish her temerity. Ever after, vSO runs the pretty tale, she faced her Sun-god from the earliest dawn to the last descending ray. Now what was the flower which once had been Clytie? If I knew for certain I should surely tell all the world and you, and rich would be my reward for bringing a long suspense to end. But why be so exacting? If you love blue, choose for Clytie this shrinking wild heliotrope, the mere name of which means to turn with the sun. For you then, the story- means heliotrope and the transmogrification of Clytie. If perchance, no wild heHotrope grows in your chilly atmos- phere, and if you will let a glorious yellow blind your mind's eye to all else, then let Clytie speak to you from the heart of this less constant but mighty audacious sunflower, than which no other more boldly stares Apollo eye to eye the hot noon through. Choose you sky-flowers, tum-sols, shy flowers or froward, the legend's as charmingly fitted to the one as to the other and perhaps even Jove himself didn't know into which one he had turned her. With him it must have been all in a day's work and if even worthy Homer nods sometimes as nod he must if we are to beHeve Horace/ then who shall say that mighty Jupiter never took forty winks when his Juno was not looking. Search the Olympic records and you will find that he did many a worse thing while her \ ^be jfragrant Bote Book queenly back was turned. As for us, we shall see Clytie and her constancy in every flower that winks away the dew in the morning or goes to sleep when Apollo disappears in the west. Tom Moore consulted no learned botanist when he ^^ i " No, the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets But as truly loves on to the close As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets^ / f The same look which she turn'd when he rose. ature, the Great Appealer. Sooner or later she gets into the heart of every man. A Tiberius might look from his island home over a world bowing in obedience to his will and then turn in homely love to the flowers and vegetables in his quiet Capri garden. A Diocletian could resign first the half and then the whole of his world mantle, content to give it up for a simple Hfe, and prove himself to be in earnest later by refusing to lift again to his tired shoulders the waiting burden. Imagine the surprise at Maximian's little court when they were told Diocletian's message. "Were you but to come to Salona and see the flowers and vegetables which I raise in my garden with my own hands, you would no longer talk to me of empire. " A Washington hears Nature's appeal at Mount Vernon after agonizing years spent in his country's service ; a Gladstone hears it in the solitary forest ; to some it comes as by right, to some by accident ; to one for a moment and to another for all of life's span. Virgil could indeed sing V" \ 1be^Gerow0 an^ IbUlocfte and well he sang, of a man and arms, of heroes, kings and ) gods, but in the end needs must that he should sing of nature in her piuity, her simpHcity and her bounty, and tell his i Maecenas, ^"^^i^ .-0^ " What makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn The fruitful soil, and when to sow the com; The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine; And how to raise on elms the teeming vine; The birth and genius of the frugal bee, I sing Maecenas, and I sing to thee." But we have wandered far afield. Angelus has rung, the slopes are silent and night comes on when no man can work, and we must "make the most of time, it flies away so fast, yet method will teach us to win time." We will trudge homeward over the hills and far away to our garden where some of oiu- flower friends love best to grow. How often do you suppose the poor things would choose for a home the places to which they are so ruthlessly transplanted? Talmud says, "There is a certain spot appointed for every man where he is to die and he can die there only." Fatalistic doctrine, \\ but perhaps not entirely untrue either of Hfe or death, of man or of flower. Can we not imagine a sort of heaven where a golden rule is enforced for flowers and animals as well as for man? WHhy not consult them once in a while, they who so richly repay every loving thought or attention. I perfectly knew it would be just so. Here is the whole day gone, — Phoebus fled and Luna getting ready to peep ^^\\ ;\| 84 ^be ifragrant lRote J56b?i at us and not a tithe of the beautiful things in the fields and wild places have we had a chance to see. Oh, well. We are often told that it is the part of wisdom to rise from the board unreplete and doubtless we shall achieve something of the same result now by bending our cheerful way homeward unsatisfied it is true but very far from dissatisfied. What a f difference lies there! We shall think happily of the beauties we have seen today along the way and wish, I hope, to return. "Oh! to be there for an hour when the shade draws in beside the hedgerows, ? / 1 i i /it And falling apples wake the drowsy noon; i . ^ Oh! for the hour when the elms grow sombre and human in ^/■\ the twilight, i / /( / / And gardens dream beneatii the rising moon." v^ \ I f ^\^ ...kiiv^i i-^ THE MASQUERAX)ER AS in the case of the poppy, so with the hollyhock, the learned tell us that it was brought to Europe from the East : but what the learned do not tell us, — ^what indeed the learned may be said malevolently to conceal — is the ground upon which its mere introduction from the East, and the far East at that, should have entitled it to be 1 1 called the "holy-hoc" or "holy-mallow," for the one-time romance that it was brought from Palestine seems justly I \y^, discredited. For several centuries it has been the habit and fashion of civilisation to consider the East quite the reverse of holy, and the farther East, the more unsanctified it was. Kipling has framed this thought in a crisp if inelegant way when he sings the appeal of the unholy East in the plea to " Ship me somewheres east of Suez, Where the best is like the worst, — Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, And a man can raise a thirst." But nevertheless and notwithstanding all of this, the bald fact remains that the mallow of India, when brought to 85 V/., II \ t II 86 s^ Zhc fragrant IRotc Booft its new European home, was immediately dignified as the "Holy-Mallow" or holy-hoc, which in time easily corrupted itself into the hollyhock of the present day. However, perhaps it is best so, for the plant itself is scarcely less daring than its unfitting name. ji^^^ ^ / \ X'^ As we see the hollyhock today in our gardens, after many years of careful breeding and propagation, scientific crossings and secret experiment, it is not altogether easy to hark back to the earlier stage when it had one colour and bowed only once in the season, and that almost at the summer's end. This was a matter of note even as late as the time of Tenny- son, for he says: " A spirit haunts the year's last hours Dwelling within those yellowing bowers; . . . Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; /Heavily hangs the hollyhock, \ ^. r Heavily hangs the tiger-lily." \ \^\ No longer is the hollyhock associated solely with "moul- dering leaves " nor with the damp and sullen autumn. He has shaken off all of this gloom and now comes to us in a pink and yellow profusion along with the buttercups and the daisies and pansies of which Katharine Tynan paints so -^ ^ loving a word-picture. In the matter of colour too, the hollyhock proves itself a merry trickster, and like many another lives a bold and dual life, justifying the famous dramatist who asserts that ^"x^ ."^ ZTbe fiDaequeraber Things are not all what they Skimmed milk masquerades as cream On the strength of the nattiral and original colour of the mallows, the family name of Malve was adopted to designate the purple which originally was their only dress. This however is only the Occidental story of the hollyhock's colour. In the Orient this chameleon presses other interests, and filling a commercial end by producing a very valuable '' v blue dye, has gone down into Eastern history and song in connection with the royal blue of Heaven instead of the royal purple of Earth. Before the days of aniline dyes, a large part of the blue which we so cheerfully accepted as "indigo" was, it is said, the product of this very colourful plant, and in this connection, and as illustrating one of the many uses to which fable has put this blue dye of India, I cannot forbear to repeat from the Sanskrit a fable older than Christianity,' older than ^sop, older perhaps than Rome herself, contained in an antique Indian fable-collection, and known as THE DYED JACKAL ^/n \ And the goose said to the King:"' '^ ^ f* " Your Royal memory doubtless retains the story of The Jackal's fate, who being coloured blue, Leaving his party, left his own life too." "No. How was that ? " said the King, and the goose related THE STORY OF THE DYED JACKAL , i | J' A jackal once upon a time, as he was prowling about the suburbs of the town, slipped into a blue-vat ; and, not being \\ \ Zbc ifraaant mote Book able to get out, he laid himself down so as to be taken for dead. The dyer, coming in presently and finding what seemed to be a dead jackal, carried him into the jungle and flung him away. Left to himself the jackal found his natural colour changed to a splendid blue. "Really," he /reflected, "I am now of a most magnificent tint; why should I not make it conduce to my elevation?" With this in view he assembled the other jackals, and thus harangued them: "Good people, the goddess of the wood, with her own divine hand, and with every magical herb of the forest, has anointed me King. Behold the complexion of royalty! And henceforth transact nothing without my imperial permission. " The jackals, overcome by so distinguished a colour, could do nothing but prostrate themselves and promise obedience. His reign, thus begun, extended to the lions and tigers; and with these high-bom attendants he allowed himself to despise the jackals, keeping his own kindred at a distance as though ashamed of them. The jackals were indignant, but an old beast of their number thus consoled them : "Leave the impudent fellow to me. I will contrive his ruin. These tigers and the rest think him a King because he is coloured blue; we must therefore show them his true colours. Do this now. In the evening-time, come close about him and set up a great jackal-yell. He is sure to join in as he used to do : I "Hard it is to conquer nature; If a dog be made a King, 'Mid the coronation trumpets He would gnaw his sandal string. x' \ /I Zbc fl^a0quera^er And when he yells, the tigers will know him for a jackal and will fall upon him. " "And the thing befell exactly so, and the jackal," concluded the goose, "met the fate of one who^le^ye^ his roper party." 1 If' this ancient story of detecting fraud by plafcing the suspect in his original environment and watching develop- ^ ments, reminds us of David Harum's tale of the canal barge- man who was identified by the call of "Low Bridge, " it will but serve to prove the claim that there are in reality only forty-seven separate and distinct story plots in the world, all others being mere variations. That two of these, sepa- rated by all of civilization, should turn on the same point but emphasizes indeed, as the goose declared, howp. FLORA'S SCEPTRE Lily's height bespoke command, fair, imperial flower; seem'd design'd for Flora's hand, sceptre of her power." Cowper. y^-^V NCE in a blue moon we face perfection. A few times /^C^ W in life we look something in the eye in which no? JL / / change could be wished even had we the power to work change. So to me the lily has always appealed as quite beyond improvement and rather as surrounded by the odour of sanctity. Greater folk than you or I have found themselves quite satisfied with the lily just as she is. It seems as though I recollected Salisbury's telling King John that " To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, //^ To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful, ridiculous excess." _,^ V Full well I know that one other royal flower has eve; contended sceptre and diadem with the lily. Hardly when I > y flora*0 Sceptre see a Kly do I dare think on the rose, nor plucking roses, risk one lilyward glance. I have a fellow feeling for the Youth who sighed, "Which rose make oiirs, which lily leave and then, as best, recall." What a blessing that we may have both these imperial favourites; flaming rose in her regal beauty today and saintly lily in her perfection tomorrow. It seems that we must use strategy as Flora did when, Within the garden's peaceful scene Appear'd two lovely foes, Aspiring to the rank of queen. The lily and the rose. . . . '' Yotus is," she said, " the nobler hue, 7 ' And yours the statelier mien; And, till a third surpasses you, I / Let each be deem'd a queen." That a flower so beautiful as the lily, a flower springing lightly and naturally in the soil of so many ancient lands, should have become a part of the romance and tradition of nearly every classic people is quite to have been expected, and so we find it intertwined with both history and legend. It has had many names, but then, it has been known and loved and stmg by many peoples. Old Homer himself, the father of all the poets,* relates the experiences of Ulysses in his journey from ancient Troy back to his native Ithaca, and we see the hero stopping with the Lotophagi where he too ate the water-Uly and thereafter forgot friends and coimtry and wished forever to remain in idle bliss in the land of the lotus. y] J J . ZTbe ifragrant IRote IBooJx / 1 1 Hindu mythology would not be the mysterious Eastern thing it is did it not furnish us more tales of the lily than we could recount. There was, of course, Lakshmi, the consort of the great god Vishnu to commence with. Was she not called the "Lily-bom" after the pretty tradition that it was ^ thought becoming even in a goddess to be scooped out of River Ocean on the petals of a blue water-lily : \ I [/ \ *' Fragrant with the scent , A ^ Of lotus and laden with the spray \ | /, \ Caught from the waters of the rippling stream.* ^ \ There in the compass of three short lines we see the imagery of the East, the greatest of the East's religions, and the greatest dramatist of India, all doing homage to the lily. And even in China, where nearly everything seems to the Western mind to be as topsy-turvy as possible, where white is the colour of mourning and where the asking of impertinent questions is not only a privilege but rather a mark of re- spect,— even in China the lily is the emblem of beauty and loveliness. Among the Manchus, where the binding of the feet was thought greatly to enhance a woman's beauty, these poor deformed extremities have from days out of mind been playfully and admiringly called "Kin Le-en," — the golden HUes. \pf^^ So look where we will in ancient lore we find the lily. In paintings, in carvings, in poems, in history; from all of these it is absolutely inseparable. In ancient Egypt, the \' \ .- -^^. f^t same water-lily which held Ulysses spellbound, but grown if possible more beautiful, is the sacred lotus of which the priests of the Nile are ever chanting: "I am the pure lotus which springeth up from the divine splendour that belongeth to the nostrils of Ra. I am the pure one who cometh forth out of the field." So common and so dear was this Hly of Egypt that it became in time the symbol of southern or upper Egypt as the papyrus was the index of northern or low coimtry. In the great temple of Kamak, after wander- ing over many acres of beautiful and absorbingly interesting ruins, if we pass into the enclosure which is called the "Hall of Records " (how ghastly modern that sounds !) we shall find still standing two old carved columns erected there to sup- port the roof long since gone; and upon these pillars, which have stood just where they now stand since the days of Moses, we shall find that the masons of almost forgotten days have carved the emblems of the south and of the north, one face bearing still in clear and beautiful cutting the petals of the water-lily to show us of today that the Ramses who put them there ruled a country of which the lily was the sacred flower, a country whence Ramses, masons, pomp and might have long since faded, crumbled and gone, leaving only stone and lilies to remind us of their past glories, jj j Nor was Babylon behind the rest of the world of her aay in appreciating this most graceful of flowers. Familiar to us all rings the name of the great home of Darius and his capital which he called "Shushan," and do we not read in the pro- Zhe jfragrant IRote Book / ^M' phecies of Daniel of his coming unto " Shushan The Palace " '. Were we versed in ancient Hebrew we should understand that this was merely another way of calling this beauty spot "The Palace of the Lilies," for Shushan means simply "a lily" and was taken by these ancients as a suitable name for their magnificent capital. If we recollect the tragedy of Haman, it was in this very Shushan The Palace where Vashti made "a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to King Ahasuerus." In the palace of The Lily. LiHes there are too in Palestine and ever have been. Lilies red and lilies white. When St. Matthew refers to " the lilies of the field," ah! what lilies they were, for of all gor- geous sheets of flame, sure none were ever more beautiful or more conspicuous than the hUes to which he referred. "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lihes of the field how they grow, they toil not neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." That Solomon's glory would not have been satisfied with mere white is at once understood and has been more than once raised as an objec- tion by those who had not stopped to consider the royal colour of these tender lilies, of which Solomon says, "His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers, his lips like lilies." Lips mind you. Red, red lips, like red, red lilies. And how beautifully, gloriously red a field of these can be, only one who has looked on them in their riot of blooming ;/ ' \\\ \/^ 3 V V can say. Lydia of Thyatira had no more gorgeous colours in all her busy dye-house\^ vs, N^ \ \-^ \ ^ Only a poor mean portion of the wonders of poesy dedi- cated to this princess of flowers can we tell, — a wealth of, romance reaching from the darkest days of barbarity and, heathendom down to the last damp sheet of the morning paper. If we had in our charge the sacred alms-bowl of Buddha could we crowd all of the lilies of which stories are told into it? I suppose it would depend upon the spirit of th offering. Do you remember the sacred alms-bowl of Buddha ? Endless tales are told in India and Thibet of this mysterious wonder-worker. Should a thief try to steal it, as rash men have, it grows so heavy that ten elephants cannot move it. Into it the rich may pom* their offerings from early morning until dewy eve without nearing the brim, but should a poor wayfarer, worn and hungry, cast a few flowers within, im- mediately it overflows with plenteousness, raining benedic- tions on the giver. How would you like Buddha's alms-bowl as an ornament for your garden? But the days are all too short, the tales all too many and one must give pause, for "eternity gives nothing back of the minute that has struck." Where however in all of the tomes of lore could we find advice more delightful to the lover of nature and natiure's favourites than the behest of Israel's mightiest king, I \ \ I | jf yf " To feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies." XII A YEAR AND A DAY^ An Interlude ORN way up on a thundering mountain side A thousand thousand years ago There was I free to swirl or race or gKde Swiftly down to the pool below. How to this meadow so serene I came, Busy with murmuring ripples but so tame, Scarcely now I seem to know. hen came Winter, a gaoler cold and dark, \ And I dreamed the livelong, gruesome night; But none were near and none would pause to hark And none could see my cheerless pHght; i 1 Por the heartless ice that bound me all too well In my little trench below would never tell Though I screamed aloud with all my might. One day I gathered my strength to burst these bonds \ That held so hard and held so fast. ' One of the Outdoor Odes by C. Arthur Coan. H l?ear anb a Dai? Robber, I stole from springs and lowered ponds Till Snap and Crack went the ice at last. Free, now I can sing my song and play Every prankish trick that comes my way And laugh with glee at the dream that's past. Watch me tickle the rushes in the shade Of the old mill where the waters run ; Watch how with interest ample I've repaid Each smiling shaft of the welcome sun ; I f Watch me caress the bank and splash that stone All over with spray and hear me drone The lazy song I have just begun. Hotter and hotter still the sim at noon Seems to grow and everywhere Beasts a-thirsting drink me, so that soon I shall have no drop to spare. ^^Vv I sink exhausted into the thirsty earth, If succour come not soon my life is worth Three ha'pence, — naught, — a breath of air. A driving storm fills every puddle flowing ; \ ^ Once more I'm the jolly brook I'd be. / I've stayed here all too long and must be going A hundred miles to join the sea. My run to the ocean's only half the way; I'm due on the mountain top in A year and a day By the god of the river's fixed decree. / / \ rfu THE chancellor's CONSCIENCE i:* three Darley-coms, round and diy make an inch, then tell me please, how tall is a flower? Now, ever since the days when Edward of Carnarvon was King of Albion, the three little grains of barley, provided they were^ sufficiently round and sufficiently dry, have measured an inch in the law, and yet no man has ventured to say how tall a flower is! If I speak of beautiful flowers do you not think of sheltered gardens and sequestered nooks and perhaps, oh ye city-bred, of greenhouses and of the florist's foggy shop on the corner? Are these not all a part of Flora's crown? Indeed yes, but there are others and still again, others. Larger perhaps, sturdier surely, but as full of radiance as the dawn, and who shall measure them with a foot rule or decry them because forsooth they lift their heads on a longer stem than their sisters. . Once upon a time in days long past and nearly forgotten there was a man who wrote of philosophy and of humility, of learning and of friends, and, surprising to state, he wrote of law as well. Let us clip a page from his wisdom on this ^ ^ / y ZTbe (Ebancetlor'a (tonsdence dreary subject. ' ' Equity, ' * he says, " is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, — know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'Tis all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a ' foot, ' a Chancellor's foot; What an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'Tis the same thing in the \ Chancellor's conscience." So it is much easier to measure flowers by the Chancellor's conscience than with a tape, and all of the seasons through I have matchless things over here in the deep quiet forests and in yonder orchards which equal the best your hot-house robber has to charm you with. Shall we take a look? Let it be spring then with all of the apple trees in blossom, pink as Aurora and light as the spin-drift blown from one of Neptune's waves. Find me a flower more perfect in all that goes to make perfection, — ^form, colour, perfume, and the luscious fruit to follow. And then if you are philosophically inchned, you will find a good bit of food for thought as well as for the table, for if one stops to consider it the apple is by '; way of being the very father of all the fruits of history. Think of Hercules, sent to steal his dear stepmother's wed- ding presents. That would hardly pass as the correct thing today. It is not being done now, but it seems that it was all right in the days when Earth gave Juno the Apples of Hesperides at her nuptials. It was, we will admit, a rather Y) I tTbc Jfragrant IRote Boo?? low trick of Hercules to make Atlas play monkey to his cat by getting the coveted treasures for him, but one must remember that Hercules was not after mere chestnuts but apples and golden ones at that. Without considering the very hard trip he had in finding the land behind the North j Wind where the Hyperboreans Uved and where he dis- covered the apples at last, Hercules must also have gotten very weary holding the earth on his shoulders while Atlas was absent obtaining the precious fruit, so perhaps we may feel that he paid a fair price for what he got, and I do not believe that Minerva half appreciated the gift when they were presented to her. ^ i And then there was the Garden of Eden. We are not told in Genesis that the forbidden fruit resembled an apple, but an apple it has always been nevertheless and it is far too late to change it now. You may not believe that form of the story. I may not believe the stories of Al Koran, either, but I must nevertheless consider the fact that my Moslem brothers believe them or I shall never understand a page of Mahommedan history. Ever since European art began, the apple has signified Adam and the temptation in the Garden of Eden, and if it be an error, it lies far out of my path to correct it. Do you know that wonderful engraving by Al- brecht Diirer which he started as a Venus and Adonis and finally finished as Adam and Eve? I hope you know it. It; stands before me as I write; Eve persuasively talking to her spouse, a toad and a cat, a goat and a parrot in the back- ^l *^\i \ii\*3\ I \ Zbe CbanceIIor'6 Conscience ground for local colour, the serpent hanging to the tree at her elbow with sibilant advice, and Eve holding the apple ready to give it to the father of the race. Jolly big, fat apple, too. A voila. We were talking only a short time ago of Troy and Time's devouring progress. Where's Troy, and what but another apple led to Troy's destruction. That carries us back almost to Adam, doesn't it? Eris was the goddess of discord, — sort of an advance agent for all of the future trouble-breeders, you know. It seems that she had been omitted from the invita- tion list for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis when the cards were sent out, so when all of the gods and goddesses were assembled she threw into the group a beautiful golden apple on which she had written the words "For the Fairest." My, would not that create trouble even today, and it was just like that then, too. Every one of the lady gods was willing to stake her Olympian coronet that the apple of discord was intended for no one but her. I suppose that Olympian clothes would not tear nor Olympian hair come out, but there was quite an eruption. Aphrodite and Hera and Pallas all entered the lists and, although you may not wish to believe it, I am unable to hide the miserable fact that every goddess of them stooped to bribery. Zeus, as usual, dodged the responsibility of making the choice and left it all to Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy, and Paris decided, you will recollect, in favour of Aphrodite. Hera never stopped raging until the wooden horse had done its work, Troy was no more, '!»/ / X y// 102 ZTbe ifraorant 1Rote Bboft ^ and Ulysses was on his way back to Ithaca. More apples, you see! .-^\ \ // / i/..,».--V ^ So whether an apple is red and luscious or filled with smoke and ashes Hke the Dead Sea fruit described by Josephus, it is always a type. In the times of our forebears and their' sires' sires, the peach got its name, which really means only "Persian apple"; the orange to Xenophon was a Medic apple and the apricot an Armenian apple, just as the little red tomato was more recently a love-apple and the potato is to this day an apple-of -earth. And all because a little town near Rome's seven eternal hills once abounded in fruits and bore for itself the name of Abella. So fruit has been "abella" ever since, same as you are Smith and I am >^ Jones. A magnificent, restful, dignified forest offers its inviting shade beyond the orchard. Let us look it over for more tree- flowers. One of the very tallest of all these monarchs fronts us, covered with dainty cup-shaped blossoms, green and yellow and soft pinky-brown. Never a tulip in your border had form or colour more exquisite than my tulip tree, and never a tulip bloomed more generously. Do you never think of it when you handle your wooden ware or send a particu- larly staunch crate to the cellar? Crate and flower and wooden spoon may all have come directly from the brother of our imposing friend. Now not far away stands another giant. This time it is a horse-chestnut in all the glory of its blooming, waving tufts of blossoms at us any one of which is r \\ ^: rA V \> ZTbe Cbancellor'^ Conscience a bouquet in itself; while underneath, scattered here and there amongst the playing shadows are glorious dogwoods, pink and white and lavish as few others in their floral decora- tions. Truly the forest is quite as much a flower garden as your walled and watered space. '^^^SNk ^'. As if to call us again to the East and the kingdoms which even we think of as "flowery, " we spy a shimmering cherry tree full of present delight and future promise. What would picttu-esque Japan be without its season of cherry-blossoms and then a rush of peonies and wisteria and iris and azaleas? Do you know the difi^erence between the European iris and the Oriental one? I do not mean in their form and height and colour. Oh, you know these things quite as well as I do. I mean their queer nestling habits, queer as individual humans. No? Then watch these two sets, the east and the west growing side by side here by the brook. See these westerners grow up and up the bank, striding straight for the top, intent on reaching high ground. Watch again those of the other land, groping nearer and ever nearer to the purling water until at last their proud heads wave over the rushing stream itself. The East and the West do not mix you see, even in irises. These water-lovers need no " Kiku-No-Mon " stamped upon them to show us where they came from, and they are almost as Japanese as the chrysanthemum herself. How I wish that you could see my beautiful forest just as it is all of the year around, aspiring and dignified as any w"^^ old Gothic cathedral, with vaulted ceilings and groined roof, H, V \ 104 .— A ITbe f ragf ant Bote IBbok aisles, nave, spires, choirs and all. Flowers are on the altar and the Benedicite is always being sung. A hushed and almost solemn reverence steals over us while the breeze high ^^^ above our heads intones a liturgy quite its own. Be you Jew or Gentile, Turk or infidel, bond or free, it is a divine worship which we attend. \\ \i^\ J AUSPICIOUS HOPE 'Auspicious hope! in thy sweet garden grow Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe. " ' Campbell. AND why should not hope be the great gardener since without hope there would be no gardens! It is perhaps a trite saying that the wish is father to the thought, but in it lies partly hidden the germ of a great gardening truth. We hope for those things for which we wish, I grant you, but can we truly be said to hope for bounties which lie far beyond the horizon of probable fulfil- ment? Wishes may be as boundless as the imagination but hope is ever defined as being a desire coupled with a prospect of realisation. Of all created things man himself is the least rehable and with man we may look for exceptions, failures and disappointments; but the law of Nature, if we look with care, is seen to be as the law of the Medes and Persians which I altereth not. When science happens upon what appears to be an exception to a natural law, no time is wasted in looking for a broken rule. No such thing ever existed. All of the energy of research is bent to discover what hither- to unknown I05 io6 Zbc jfraorant mote Book ^ law or combination of laws has acted in the particular case to produce a result which takes on the appearance of anarchy but is not. Were all oaks sprung from exactly similar acorns and subjected to precisely similar conditions, then would all oaks be as like as "The twinnes (twins) of Hippocrates, who were as lyke as one pease is to another. ' ' Now Nature knows nothing whatever of mutiny nor has she a single disobedient subject throughout her realm. What she promises, that she will most surely perform ; and in this has ever lain the great hope which inspires every gardener or tiller of the soil. How should we plant except by hope? Faith is a happy and j religious state which transcends mere demonstration. Faith is given to some but not to all. Hope on the contrary "springs eternal in the human breast," as universal as Nature's fulfilment of her promises. The world would have starved long before it had gained a co-ordinated faith had not Nature, or Divine Providence shown a bountiful succession of sun and rain, of nutriment in the soil and life in the air and stood always ready with that vital something which we call a germ and which is mysteriously tucked away in every seed. In this is the hope in which every man is my brother, whether he have a higher faith or not ; and this trustful expectancy in the powers unknown has made good gardeners of many materialistic and most unreligious peoples. It may not be faith, but It is indeed an auspicious hope. \\/) We have nearly finished the circuit of our freehold, nestling dingle and windswept field, sunny garden and t^ v r/ ;X^ /, ( w Hu0p!dou6 "fcope sombre grove. Spring has lured us with her promise, summer has yielded us her treasures, both seasons have preached to us their sermons ; Michaelmas has come and gone and with it the Indian Summer, that meditative, pungent week which seems to call us, becoming articulate again as *' the dead summer's soul.'* To some, the windy days, the falling leaves, the grey hoar-frost on the grasses of an early morning, make a picture of sadness and desolation, as when Bryant writes " The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows, brown and ^^^ But for me, I can never look at a whirl of falling leaves chasing each other in a mad scramble across the lawn that they do not seem to me messengers come straight from Comus the little god of laughter. Every separate leaf hurries along with his mind on his work, each apparently bearing some side- splitting joke which he is in duty bound to deliver with the utmost speed to some solemn and unappreciative human just around the comer. I quite agree with Peter Pan's biographer when he asserts that "there is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fim as a fallen leaf." See them over there playing hury my leader in that comer by the fence. Don't you see, the game is to keep the big fellows pinned into a wind-trap while the little coves go flying along outside and deliver their messages first. If you watch them you will see that they are ever so much more adroit at playing last tag and prisoner's base than ever you were. They never %i \w ^h.,^m\ii \ ^be ifragrant IRote Booft have to ask teacher for a day off. That's what they are all the time, — always just leaving for the other place. The fall never looks dreary to me. It is to me "the year's last, loveliest smile, " and I love to think of Nature as casting] the leaves down with her bountiful hand, not at all as being j, through with them, for she is never through with anything, but as a snuggly comforter to guard the tender things of i earth from the frosts to come and at the same time returning /A with a magnificent opulence to the hungry soil much of the i very nutriment which she had borrowed for sap and bark I and blossom in the early spring. "So fall the Hght autumnal leaves, one still upon the other following till the bough strews all its honours. " Surely Nature never intended man to rake up these generous gifts and heedlessly burn both this winter's bed-spread and next spring's breakfast as well! « Ja( Nature bravely fortifies herself against the cold and hunger which she feels coming on with the singing winds of autumn and then along comes man and does his little best to beggar the poor old dame. She who does her spring planting in the fall will guard it right jealously if left to herself until once again "The yonge sonne hath in the ram his halfe cours y-ronne" after which she knows that beautiful Phoebus / Apollo will keep her garden hot for her. I God Almighty, we are told, planted the first garden and \ by what more charming name could the great law giver have described it than the one inspiration chose for him when Genesis first was penned, and he called it Eden, the Garden HV \K \i jf 7 of Delight. How pertinaciously this idea of a divine garden has woven itself into nearly every great religion of mankind. With the early Hebrews and the later Christians it was ever the Garden of Eden. In ancient Greece, with the gods on high Olympus and the heroes and their followers, it was the Garden of Hesperides; in every mirage conjured up by his heat-wracked imagination, the faithful Mahommedan sees the waving palms of his Irem, promised to the sons of Allah in the Koran and sung by the Eastern poets; while the old Norse Vikings saw their Odin and their Frigga, their Loki and their beautiful white Baldur in Asgard, and in Asgard their Baldur suffered his tragic death as a consequence of Odin's folly and Loki's hate. Baldur was to Asgard what Apollo was to Olympus and what Ra was to the land of the Lily and the Lotus, — the majestic and well-beloved god of the sun. So much did Odin wish to preserve and prolong the life of Baldur and to put off that evil day when darkness should rule instead of light, that he sent his royal messengers hither and yon throughout creation, pledging all things both great and small to bring no harm to Baldur. Nothing was too imposing, too dignified, too trustworthy; nothing too small, too insignificant or too mean. Every nook and comer was ransacked, every hill and valley traversed; every tree in the forest, every flower in the garden, the birds in the branches and the beasts in their lairs, all, all were sworn to bring no harm to Baldur. Thinking the search complete and immunity assured, a festival was called in Asgard where gods / i / y/i\ ^^ -ra "-■N X ''b 1 10 ^be ifraarant IRote B6o?i and heroes held high carnival together, making summer holiday in their playful efforts to injure Baldur the invul- nerable. But as Thetis, mother of Achilles, left unprotected that one fatal spot on the divine heel, and as a Delilah learned in time wherein lay the strength of a Samson, and his weakness, so had Odin failed to make Baldur invulnerable, and Loki, ever evil in design, soon found that, because it was so insignificant and because moreover it was a mere parasite, Hving on the life-sap of the sturdy oak to which it clung, one tiny sprig of mistletoe alone of all creation had escaped the fearful oath and it alone had given no promise to spare Baldur. Quickly fashioning an arrow from the innocent twig, Loki handed it to blind Hoder, bidding him join in the sport and offering to guide the aim. Blind though the archer was, yet like the arrow which Hamlet shot over the house, Hoder's shaft sped true to the mark and the sun-god fell dead, Loki's mad design accomplished. Then was summer gone from the earth and the twilight of winter took its place. Nor did weeping for Baldur ever raise him from his tomb. Seldom do we find a number of men who will agree on a common object. Terence spoke his conviction when he said so long ago, "As many men, so many minds," but when Aladdin's lamp is handed them to rub and they commence recording their hearts' wishes I find that they never proceed very far before with one consent they begin to wish for gardens. Perhaps because he was one of the first of printers and could see his wish rendered into such readable form, old %li / if If ^ / I V/l fA Hu0plclou0 Ibope III Christoph Plantin not only built up a sonnet to enshrine his garden amongst the other things which seemed to him necessary to Le Bonheur de ce Monde, but having carefully set it into type he handed it down for all to read; and here we have a few lines of his prayer: "^ "Avoir une maison commode, propre et belle, Un jardin tapiss^ d'espaliers odorans, Des fruits, d'excellent vin, peu de train, peu d'enfans Poss^der seul sans bruit une femme fiddle." And being an ecclesiastic did not, it seems, prevent Dean Swift from giving the magic lamp a little rub on his own account, nor indeed from stating quite clearly his modest but well-defined ideas as to what he would wish for his out- fitting in this world's goods and gear. He too, wishes for a garden, although he stipulates that it shall be a river front property and shall carry with it not only a house, but a handsome one, \ \ \ | ^\j i S^ " I've often wish'd that I had clear, \ For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end ; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood." We must not find fault with the worthy dean however, for his estimate of an annuity at six hundred pounds a year sounds meagre enough to our modem ears and if he wished ,A/// A Zbc jfragrant IRote Book / a handsome house, 'twas merely to lodge a friend in comfort, and for the rest, he but sought Nature's beauty and bounty in wood and field and stream. He surely was a nature lover, y t ^ ^ and after all, what's the harm of just wishing. We cannot /^**V all hope to be Spartan Thoreaus and believe that a man is rich "in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone." Might it not make a difference what the things were? Epi- grams are so much harder to live by than they are to con- struct. I sympathise from the bottom of my heart withr'^ that soldier of fortune, courtier, ambassador, servant, calli him what you will, who said to his Oriental queen : l\ \ I throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send me to distant courts ; do not bid me undertake new conquests. But make me the gardener of your flower garden." \ "V i I Ah ! There spoke a man of metal who knew his own mind in the choice of a vocation and was not afraid to speak it either. A man who had served his queen and served her well in time of war, or he would hardly dare make requests. But in time of peace he far preferred gardening to embassies and foreign travel, even with added honours. And if you re- member, she did what he asked, too. jf I / / Through nearly a year now we have trod these woodland trails and meadow paths and the formal walks of the garden, i together reading Nature's secrets, inhaling her perfumes | and jotting down her lessons on memory's pages. Nature's/ au0plclou0 Ibope \ i children are going to sleep now and we must not disturb them until they have been well refreshed. Do you remember the pretty Eastern conceit from the Sanskrit of the Hito- padesa where the Brahmin Kapila speaks comfort to holy Kaundinya over the death of his son whom Slowcoil the aged serpent had just bitten? It is one of the few cases where the mysterious Hindu mind can be followed by an Occidental and achieves much in these simple lines about sleep and death : \ Weep not! Life the hired nurse is Holding us a little space; Death the Mother, who doth take us Back into our proper place." i Thus we must think of all sleep in Nature. So even when winter comes, Earth, the mother, takes back into her keeping the flowers she has loaned awhile to Ufe during the summer and which she will loan again as long as summers shall come. ") Only one season then remains of the four, — the winter in which gardens and meadows and fields and forests, and even the little fiurry things sleep. And winter is now upon us. The birds have long since flown, the trees wave their naked , arms at us like the weird spectres they are, all the tiny \ things that squeak and hum and chirp and buzz are stilled I J and the garden would indeed be desolate were it not for the soft mantle of downy snow which pillows all things so gently. As the Psalmist says. He, indeed "giveth snow like wool." Once more you will come to the garden before the year 8 CTbe jfra^rant IRote IBook is out. Always the house is kept open and the logs burning and the latch-string flying in whatever stormy weather blows our way until after Christmas. Some year we shall perhaps be able to decide the still unsettled question of which season is the most beautiful in Nature-land. So far we have always decided in favour of whichever season happened to be at hand at the moment. Winds may blow and crack their cheeks, snow and ice and frost and cold may come at Christ- mastide, but with all there pervades the sense of that peaceful rest which the garden children are having to fit them for next year's hard work. We shall welcome you to this final test of the garden, and we promise that you shall have plenty to do, for ours is a real old-fashioned Christmas, with snow high and fires that roar in the old chimneys, kettles to simmer on the hob, com to pop and apples ready to roast. Come, do come. So always we round out the year,. - . „>- Who'll bring yule logs, — ^Who'll build fires, — Joyful work that never tires? i^/ Who'll bring holly, — Who'll make wreams, — Who'll sing carols, — ^Who'll trim trees? Who'll bring myrrh and spices old, — Who'll bring frankincense and gold? Noel, Noel! Christ is born. Peace on Earth, 'Tis Christmas mom. ^^^: HE Guest Book lying open in The Lodge of the Diimb Porter promised, you will remember, that there should be cold frames at the foot of the garden, in which were to be preserved evidence of whence the flowers had been brought and who first planted and watered them, so that you might satisfy every wish for exact information. Here are the frames, accessible but out of the way as a good cold frame should be. Look them through, help yoiurselves and please close the covers down when you have finished, as I think it will be a chilly night. ^ Frame 0. The Lodge of the Dumb Porter, ^m a\ ^ "To say you are welcome," Pericles, II, so. '3; Gather ye Rosebuds, " Herrick's Hesperides. Frame I. The Garden Gate. "The Garden Antiphone, " Coan. Frame II. Spring's Promise. "The Herald," Churchill; "Spendthrift crocus," 0. W. Holmes; "Those tulips," Shirley; "Rich-robed tulip," Lovelace; "Noisy Winds are stilled," M. M. Dodge;' "Daffodils that come," Winter's Tale, IV, 3; "The Lady Blanche's daughter," Tennyson's Princess: "Fair daffodils,' 115 ^be jfragrant mote B6b?i Herrick; "Followeth Ekko," Chaucer, Clerk's Tale; Ovid, Metamorphosis iii; "Slow, slow," Ben Jonson; "Narcissus fair," Thomson's Seasons. I \j^^ /^°^ Frame III. The Dingle Dell. \Yi fPansies, lilies," Wordsworth; "Violet crowned .\i ^( \}) •owned city, "A / ibaline. IV. 2:' / \ \ I Aristophanes; "As gentle as Zephyrs," Cymbaline, IV, 2; ^'*\^^^ "Weep no more, " Percy's Reliques; "Musty reek, " Brooke; V^/'Violets dim," Winter's Tale, IV, 3; "And all about,'! y^> ' ^ Whittier, Friends' Burial; "Where there is much light," Goethe, Affinities; "The Hyacinthine boy," Emerson; "Lettered hyacinth," Idylls of Theocritus; "Sheets of hya- cinth," Tennyson; "Take the presents, " Virgil's Eclogue II, beginning, " Tibi lilia plenis," etc., as given in Dryden's translation; "As some lone miser," Goldsmith's Traveler; "Gilliflowers," H. B. Stowe; "Benign is God," El Koran, Sura XLII; "Instead of thorn," Isaiah LV, 13; "Bag of a Bee," Herrick; "Deathless Laurel," Dryden, Flower and Leaf; "Their groves o' Myrtle," Bums; "'Tis thought the king is dead," Richard II, II, 4; "I play'd to please," Browne (161 3). Vf Frame IV. The Little People. " Puppy's Lament," Coan; "Petunias pink," Coan; "In olde days," Tale of the Wife of Bath; "If thou'rt of air," Scott's Pirate, XXIII; "Puppy's Approval," Coan; "This / maketh," Chaucer. Frame V. Hera's Messenger Service. "Meantime to Beauteous Helen," Iliad, Book III (Pope's tran.) ; "Let me hear from thee, " 2 Henry VI, Act III, scene 2; "Jog on, jog on," Winter's Tale, "Song of Autolycus." Frame VI. Morn of a Thousand Roses. jjj "Rights hath the rose, " Coan, Feather and Song; "Nor hald "V TfN^THk I I Zbc Colb 3frame0 ^ I non udir flouer, " Dunbar, Thrissil and Rois; -'And let them \ also," Spenser's Epithalamion ; "He that plants a thorn," Bidpai, a Brahmin of ancient date; "I sometimes think," Rubaiyat, XIX; "Each mom a thousand roses brings," Omar Khayyam. Frame VII. The Four Winds of Heaven. " To Aeolus," " The North Wind's Reply," " The Coming of the West Wind," "The Breath of Auster," "The Song of Euros," Coan. 7 Frame VIII. Great-Grandam's Posy. " /\a "Geraniums fragrant," an acrostic, Coan; "Grapes are first sour," Marcus Aurelius; "And e'en while fashions," Goldsmith, Deserted Village ; " Rosemary, that's for remem- brance," Hamlet, IV, 5; "I know a bank," Midsummer Night's Dream, II, 2; " 'Tis an Observation," Government of the Tongue; "By a cornfield's side, " Browning, De Gustibus; "Like a white Poppy," Virgil, Aneid, IX; "Thou art a jasamine sweet," Epic of Bidisari, Book VI; "All around the marsh's shores," Odes of Ch'in: "Hysterical squirms," 0. W. Holmes, Rip Van Winkle: "Spikenard," St. Mark XIV, 3; "Hyssop which springeth," I Kings IV, 33; "A Saint-Blaise," Alfred de Musset. ... I To Santa Biagio on the Gmdecca, In the flowery paddocks to gather verbennas; To Santa Biagio, on the Giudecca, There to live and to die. (Trans. C. A. C.) Frame IX. Hedgerows and Hillocks Green. ! / / "Time elaborately thrown," Young, The Last Day; "And when ye reap, " Lev. XIX, 9, 10; " In the World's audience," Tagore, The Gardener; "The primrose placing," Drayton, A II \ t Zhc jfragant IRote »ooft :.^ Polyobion; "The primrose path of dalliance," Hamlet, I, 3; "A primrose by the river," Wordsworth, Peter Bell; "The field hath eyen," Chaucer, Knight's Tale; "The hawthome bush," Goldsmith, Deserted Village; "Jack shall pipe," George Wither; "When the Merry Bells, "^.Milton, L' Allegro; "What's not devoured," Bramstone (1744) ; "The dayseye or elles, " Chaucer, Good Woman; "He who has not the spirit," Voltaire ; " So generally civil, " Boswell ; "Child of the Year," Wordsworth; "Heigh-ho, daisies," Jean Ingelow; "Nature cannot be surprised," Emerson; "To halt at the chattering brook," Masefield, Tewkesbury Road; "Nemo me impune lacessit" ("No one assails me with impunity"); "Tender handed," Aaron Hill (1685); "Seamrag or shamrock is the diminutive of the Gaelic 'seamar,' a trefoil, hence 'a little trefoil'"; "Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,*" ("All things change and we change with them,") Matthias Borbonis; "Stiff in his opinions," Dryden, Absolom and Achitophel; "Homer nods," Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, Horace, De Arte Poetica, 359; "No, the heart," Tom Moore; "What makes a plenteous," The Georgics, Book I; "Make the most of time," Goethe, Faust; "There is a certain spot," Talmud, Sucka 53; "Oh! to be there," Sir Henry Newbolt, Death of Admiral Blake. \ \ ^/ \\ \ ipRAME X. The Masquerader. "Ship me somewhere," Kipling; "A spirit haunts," \ Tennyson; "Things are not," Gilbert; "The Dyed Jackal/' from the Hitopadesta, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. Frame XI. Flora's Sceptre. "To gild refined gold, " King John, IV, 2 ; "Which rose make ours," Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra; "Within the garden's," Cowper, Lily and Rose; "Fragrant with the scent," King V! <^i^^ k -V ZTbe Colb iframes Dushyanta's Revery, Sakoontala; "I am the pure Lotus," Book of the Dead; " And why take ye thought, " St. Matt. VI, 28; "His cheeks are as spices," Canti, V, 13; "Eternity gives nothing back," Schiller; "To feed in the gardens,", Song of Solomon, VI, 2. ■.■ ' :-^^ Frame XII. A Year and a. Day. Six stanzas. Interlude, Coan. ^ Frame XIII. The Chancellor's Conscience. "Three barley-corns, round and dry" Statute of Edward \ II (1324); "Equity is a roguish thing," John Selden (1584- 1654), Table talk; " Kiku-No-Mon, " The Japanese imperial crest, which represents the full-blown chrysanthemum. \iiii .,WN &/ ■ Frame XIV. Auspicious Hope. "The twinnes of Hippocrates," John Lyly (1579); "Hope springs eternal, " Pope's Essay on Man ; "The dead summer's soul," May Clemmer; "The melancholy days," Bryant, Death of Flowers; "Year's last, loveliest smile," J. H. Bryant ; "So fall the light autumnal leaves," Dante, Inferno; "The yonge sonne, " Prologue to Canterbury Tales; "Irem Gar- dens, "Koran, Sura LXXXIX, The Daybreak; "Irem Gar- den, " see Jami, Salaman and Absal; "Shot an arrow over the house," Hamlet, V, i; "As many men," Terence, Phormio, II, 4 (B.C. 185); Christoph Plantin, Sonnette, "Le Bonheur de ce Monde," x9^ / / \ M i I To have a cheerful, bright and airy dwelling-place, With garden, lawns and climbing flowers sweet; Fresh fruits, good wine, a few children; there to meet A quiet, faithful wife, whose love shines through her face. (Trans, by J. T. R. Gibbs). / \ H V 120 .A Zhe ]fragrant t\otc Book nit in imitation of Horace; /V^ ien ; " I throw my swords, " ) \ P^ "I have often wished," Dean Swift "A man is rich," Thoreau, Walden; "i tnrow my swords, " / v I Tagore; "Weep not, Life the hired nurse," Story of Slow- S "x coil, Book of Good Counsel (trans. E. A.); "Who'll bring '' ^ yule logs, " Coan. ^ x\ \^^.p ; ? 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. DEC 12 10C9 DAVIS f'-AR PI 197^ UbC ^ 0 1981 6 3 igrp NOV 24 m LD 21A-50m-4,'59 (A1724sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley VD 03442