elishes the summer cups that
cheer but do not inebriate may add considerably to his enjoyment by
using some of the sweet herbs. Spearmint adds to lemonade the pleasing
pungency it as readily imparts to a less harmful but more notorious
beverage. The blue or pink flowers of borage have long been famous for
the same purpose, though they are perhaps oftener added to a mixture of
honey and water, to grape juice, raspberry vinegar or strawberry acid.
All that is needed is an awakened desire to re-establish home comforts
and customs, then a little later experimentation will soon fix the herb
habit.

[Illustration: Transplanting Board and Dibble]

The list of home confections may be very pleasingly extended by candying
the aromatic roots of lovage, and thus raising up a rival to the candied
ginger said to be imported from the Orient. If anyone likes coriander
and caraway--I confess that I don't--he can sugar the seeds to make
those little "comfits," the candies of our childhood which our mothers
tried to make us think we liked to crunch either separately or sprinkled
on our birthday cakes. Those were before the days when somebody's name
was "stamped on every piece" to aid digestion. Can we ever forget the
picnic when we had certain kinds of sandwiches? Our mothers minced sweet
fennel, the tender leaves of sage, marjoram or several other herbs,
mixed them with cream cheese, and spread a layer between two thin slices
of bread. Perhaps it was the swimming, or the three-legged racing, or
the swinging, or all put together, that put a razor edge on our
appetites and made us relish those sandwiches more than was perhaps
polite; but will we not, all of us who ate them, stand ready to dispute
with all comers that it was the flavors that made us forget "our
manners"?

But sweet herbs may be made to serve another pleasing, an aesthetic
purpose. Many of them may be used for ornament. A bouquet of the pale
pink blossoms of thyme and the delicate flowers of marjoram, the
fragrant sprigs of lemon balm mixed with the bright yellow umbels of
sweet fennel, the finely divided leaves of rue and the long glassy ones
of bergamot, is not only novel in appearance but in odor. In sweetness
it excels even sweet peas and roses. Mixed with the brilliant red
berries of barberry and multiflora rose, and the dark-green branches of
the hardy thyme, which continues fresh and sweet through the year, a
handsome and lasting bouquet may be made for a midwinter