-hyacinth as cheerfully as though they
were sipping the scarlet poppies in sunny August.

The garden edges and the street were overhung by graceful larches and by
thorny honey-locust trees that bore on their trunks great clusters of
powerful spines and sheltered in their branches an exceedingly
unpleasant species of fat, fuzzy caterpillars, which always chose Sunday
to drop on my garments as I walked to church, and to go with me to
meeting, and in the middle of the long prayer to parade on my neck, to
my startled disgust and agitated whisking away, and consequent reproof
for being noisy in meeting.

What fragrances arose from that old garden, and were wafted out to
passers-by! The ever-present, pungent, dry aroma of box was overcome or
tempered, through the summer months, by a succession of delicate
flower-scents that hung over the garden-vale like an imperceptible mist;
perhaps the most perfect and clear among memory's retrospective
treasures was that of the pale fringed "snow-pink," and later, "sweet
william with its homely cottage smell." Phlox and ten-weeks stock were
there, as everywhere, the last sweet-scented flowers of autumn.

At no time was this old garden sweeter than in the twilight, the
eventide, when all the great clumps of snowy phlox, night-rockets, and
luminous evening primrose, and all the tangles of pale yellow and white
honeysuckle shone irradiated; when,

"In puffs of balm the night air blows
The burden which the day foregoes,"

and scents far richer than any of the day--the "spiced air of
night"--floated out in the dusky gloaming.

Though the old garden had many fragrant leaves and flowers, their
delicate perfume was sometimes fairly deadened by an almost mephitic
aroma that came from an ancient blossom, a favorite in Shakespeare's
day--the jewelled bell of the noxious crown-imperial. This stately
flower, with its rich color and pearly drops, has through its evil scent
been firmly banished from our garden borders.

One of the most cheerful flowers of this and of my mother's garden was
the happy-faced little pansy that under various fanciful folk-names has
ever been loved. Like Montgomery's daisy, it "blossomed everywhere." Its
Italian name means "idle thoughts"; the German, "little stepmother."
Spenser called it "pawnce." Shakespeare said maidens called it
"love-in-idleness," and Drayton named it "heartsease." Dr. Prior gives
these names--"Herb Trinity, Three Faces under a Hood, Fan