ay. Nay, it was of her own accord she
assumed the pretty position you want to see again. You did not think or
care about it then.

With all one's minor trials, who would regret time spent in such
delightful labors? I have tasted so many pleasures in my devotion
hitherto, that perhaps I should be content. Yet to look upon grand
floral decorations; to behold wreath-encircled pillar and arch in lordly
halls, and baskets piled and pyramids raised from the wealth of
fairy-land conservatories!--on spectacles like these I hope to feast my
senses some future day.

Some one may ask: 'You who enjoy so fully flowers, who hang over them in
such transport when gathered, have you no interest in their cultivation?
no care to watch their growth? no love for gardening, in short?' No! I
reply; very little. I am satisfied to take the results of others'
exertions. I have no wish to plod i' the mold,' not the slightest
objection to others doing that business for me. I am too indolent to
like out-door work very well; much too fond of late rising to enjoy
weeding, digging, etc., in the early morning air. I think likely I ought
to feel differently, but I don't. Suffer me to inquire _why_ people
insist on peeping behind the scenes of nature's stage, when she seems to
take such pains to conceal her '_modus operandi_'? Let me not be too
sweeping, however. There is one kind of floriculture I could fancy.
Plants reared in winter in the house, snatched from the biting cold,
must be so caressingly tended! Vines, too, how precious they
become--every tiny tendril regarded with such tenderness, and as the
clinging branches wind in light festoons round parent shell or basket,
so do they grasp the cords of the affections and twine exultingly around
them.

Hyacinths also are pleasant to sight and smell in warm, cheerful rooms
when fast without fall drifting snows. It is the happiness of education,
of association, of possession, that such plants afford. They are
endeared inversely to their number, it may be--the solitary shrub being
as the one ewe lamb. This joy in flowers differing thus materially from
my pleasure in their artistic elements.

Ah! when shall I stop? The civil public will be wearied out ere long,
and so much has been left unsaid on my inexhaustible theme! When was a
lover ever known to tire--_himself_? A lover! Here conscience has a word
of reproach, '_Thou_ a _lover_, so unjust in thy self-conceit? Bringing
down thy goddesses to be in