in fair Japan
the imperial purple clusters were drooping over the roofs of the
tea-gardens and the walls of the Emperor's palace, and here in Aunt
Jane's garden they hung from the rickety trellis that barely supported
the weight of the royal flowers.

Aunt Jane gazed at them with worshipful eyes.

"It's been fifty years this spring," she said, "since I planted that
vine. It took it five years to come into bloomin', so I've seen it
bloom forty-five times; and every time I see it, it looks prettier to
me. I took a root of it along with me when I went to Lexin'ton to
visit Henrietta, and the gyardener planted it by the front porch so's
it could run up the big pillars--that's the difference betwixt my
gyarden and Henrietta's. She has a gyardener to plant her flowers, and
I do my own plantin'. I can't help believin' that I have more pleasure
out o' my old-fashioned gyarden than she has out o' her fine new one.
Flowers that somebody else plants and 'tends to are jest like children
that somebody else nurses and raises. I raise my flowers like I raised
my children, and I reckon that that's why I love 'em so. It's a
curious thing, child, the hold that flowers and trees has on human
bein's. You can move into a house and set up your furniture and live
there twenty years, and as long as you don't do any plantin', you
won't mind changin' your house any more'n you'd mind changin' your
dress. But you jest plant a rose-bush or a honey-suckle and then start
to move, and it'll look like every root o' that bush is holdin' you to
the place, and if you go, you'll want to take your flowers with you
jest like grandmother took her rose when she moved from old
Virginia to new Kentucky."

[Illustration: "IT WAS THE TIME OF THE BLOOMING OF THE
WISTARIA."
_Page 173._]

She paused to look again at the splendor of grace and color that
spring had brought to the old garden. No wonder we have patience to
tread the ice-bound path through the winter when we know that things
like this lie at the end. A delicate, reverent wind arose, the long,
rich tassels of bloom yielded themselves to its touch and swayed to
and fro like majesty acknowledging homage, while, bolder than the
wind, a mob of democratic bees hummed nonchalantly in the august
presence and gathered honey as if a wistaria were no more than a
country clover field.

"Henrietta was tellin' me," continued Aunt Jane, "that over yonder in
Japan when the cherry trees and this vine