folding are used, and the most
exquisite roses with their petals opening one pink or pearly crease too
far are discarded as unfit to send away. Tissue-paper covers the flowers
as they lie ready in their baskets, then oiled paper is placed on top,
and finally a thin red oilcloth is fastened over all.

Thus from two to four hundred roses of almost every variety are daily
put upon the New York train and expressed to the florist, at whose
establishment they arrive, after a few hours, as fresh, dewy, and
fragrant as when they left their parent plants.

And yet, with all these that are sent away, the home is not forgotten.
Gorgeous blooms in exquisite foreign vases adorn table, cabinet-shelf,
and mantel in every inhabited room in the house, where, among relics of
the old time, the roses of yesterday and to-day meet in a rivalry so
lovely that one is at a loss in deciding the merits of their separate
claims. The roses of to-day are freshest, and it may even be fairest;
yet there is a little poem which asks,--

What's the rose that I hold to the rose that is dead?

And thus, to one who has known and loved the place in days gone by, when
what has become a mere association and memory now made its very life and
soul, there is something in the suggestion of that verse which at least
lets itself be readily understood.

ALICE KING HAMILTON.

A HOOSIER IDYL.

It was a part of the Great West which in the past fifty or seventy-five
years has been transformed from unbroken forests, the home of the red
Indian and the deer, to a thickly-settled farming-country, dotted with
comfortable homes and traversed by railways and wagon-roads. Here and
there in retired districts the log cabins of the pioneers remained, and
wherever one looked an horizon of woods met his eye; but the numerous
towns and villages gave evidence of a higher and ever-increasing degree
of civilization.

It was a land of rich soil and lush natural growth, without rocks or
hills or swiftly-running streams, a region of corn- and wheat-fields and
orchards, of clover-pastures and melon-patches.

The human _physique_ showed good development and abundant nourishment,
but the dwellers along the sluggish creeks sometimes had a tinge of
yellow beneath the sunburn of their faces. Caste distinctions, pride of
station, were unknown here; all the people, whether their possessions
were great or small, drew their nurture from the soil, and greeted each
other with