cy Flamy, Kiss
Me, Pull Me, Cuddle Me unto You, Tickle my Fancy, Kiss Me ere I Rise,
Jump Up and Kiss Me, Kiss Me at the Garden Gate, Pink of my Joan." To
these let me add the New England folk-names--bird's-eye, garden-gate,
johnny-jump-up, kit-run-about, none-so-pretty, and ladies'-delight. All
these testify to the affectionate and intimate friendship felt for this
laughing and fairly speaking little garden face, not the least of whose
endearing qualities was that, after a half-warm, snow-melting week in
January or February, this bright-some little "delight" often opened a
tiny blossom to greet and cheer us--a true "jump-up-and-kiss-me," and
proved by its blooming the truth of the graceful Chinese verse,--

"Ere man is aware
That the spring is here
The plants have found it out."

Another dearly loved spring flower was the daffodil, the favorite also
of old English dramatists and poets, and of modern authors as well, when
we find that Keats names a daffodil as, the thing of beauty that is a
joy forever. Perhaps the happiest and most poetic picture of daffodils
is that of Dora Wordsworth, when she speaks of them as "gay and
glancing, and laughing with the wind." Perdita, in _The Winter's Tale_,
thus describes them in her ever-quoted list: "Daffodils that come before
the swallow dares and take the winds of March with beauty." Most
cheerful and sunny of all our spring flowers, they have never lost their
old-time popularity, and they still laugh at our bleak March winds.

Bouncing-bet and her comely hearty cousins of the pink family made
delightsome many a corner of our home garden. The pinks were Jove's own
flowers, and the carthusian pink, china pink, clove pink, snow pink,
plumed pink, mullein pink, sweet william, maltese cross, ragged robin,
catch-fly, and campion, all made gay and sweet the summer. The clove
pink was the ancestor of all the carnations.

The richest autumnal glory came from the cheerful marigold, the "golde"
of Chaucer, and "mary-bud" of Shakespeare. This flower, beloved of all
the old writers, as deeply suggestive and emblematic, has been coldly
neglected by modern poets, as for a while it was banished from modern
town gardens; but it may regain its popularity in verse as it has in
cultivation. In farm gardens it has always flourished, and every autumn
has "gone to bed with the sun and with him risen weeping," and has
given forth in the autumn air its acrid odor, which to me is not
dis