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flowers. They should be cherished as bric-a-brac, when they are worthy
specimens of the art of potter and painter, but as receptacles for
flowers they have no use beyond holding sprays of beautiful foliage or
silver-green masses of ferns.

Porcelain, plain in tint and of carefully chosen colours, such as
beef-blood, the old rose, and peach-blow hues, in which so many simple
forms and inexpensive bits of Japanese pottery may be bought, a peculiar
creamy yellow, a dull green, gobelin, and Delft blue and white, sacred
to the jugs and bowls of our grandmothers, all do well. Cut glass is a
fine setting for flowers of strong colour, but kills the paler hues, and
above and beyond all is the dark moss-green glass of substantial texture
that is fashioned in an endless variety of shapes. By chance, gift, and
purchase we have gathered about a dozen pieces of this, ranging from a
cylinder almost the size of an umbrella-stand down through fluted,
hat-shaped dishes, for roses or sweet peas, to some little troughs of
conventional shapes in which pansies or other short-stemmed flowers may
be arranged so as to give the look of an old-fashioned parterre to the
dining table.

I had always found these useful, but never quite realized to the full
that green or brown is the only consistent undercolour for all field and
grass-growing flowers until this summer. But during days that I have
spent browsing in the river woods, while Bart and Barney, and more
recently Larry, have been digging the herbs that we have marked, I have
realized the necessity of a certain combination of earth, bark, and
dead-leaf browns in the receptacles for holding wood flowers and the
vines that in their natural ascent clasp and cling to the trunks and
limbs of trees.

Several years ago mother sent me some pretty flower-holders made of
bamboos of different lengths, intended evidently to hang against
door-jambs or in hallways. The pith was hollowed out here and there, and
the hole plugged from beneath to make little water pockets. These did
admirably for a season, but when the wood dried, it invariably split,
and treacherous dripping followed, most ruinous to furniture.

A few weeks back, when looking at some mossed and gnarled branches in
the woods, an idea occurred to Bart and me at the same moment. Why could
we not use such pieces as these, together with some trunks of your
beloved white birch, to which I, _via_ the screen at Opal Farm, was
becoming insensibl