DECEMBER. 557 



Clematis or traveller's joy, often clusters, with its 

 white plumose seeds, as if all ready for a start at the 

 breaking-up. 



Sometimes, even in the unnoticed lap of the dying 

 year, a few flowers of earth glisten before the almost 

 unconscious eye. They are either too early or too 

 late, and we take no note of them, for they fail to 

 awaken our sympathies. They may be like, they are 

 like gifts to a dying man success, when hope has 

 died away and cannot be awakened like joys that 

 might once have charmed us in fancy's younger hours, 

 they now only mock the deadened heart steeled 

 by disappointment, and so encrusted by the rust of 

 care, that imagination finds no pulse to throb to its 

 appeal. The flowers of youth, the flowers of spring, 

 these are worth possessing; they inspire hope, they 

 promise joy, they picture love, they portray in their 

 fragrance and lustre beauty and happiness ; but the 

 flowers of winter are like the dregs of the bowl : who 

 cares to drink them ? age may indeed " play with 

 flowers" in its second childhood, amidst misty and 

 fitful gleams of memory, but like the spoiled magnet 

 they attract no longer the charm is gone, and no 

 bright vision wakens up, inspired by their contact. 

 To pluck an opening flower, to give or to ofier it at 

 the shrine of beauty, might once have thrilled the 

 soul to extacy ; but, from the shrivelled and benumbed 

 hand of age, who cares to pluck a flower, or who 

 exists to deem it worth while to present one 

 take them away! So the year fades with all its 

 "dreams of greatness," and withered leaves and 

 dead stalks, like prostrate hopes, are its appropriate 

 accompaniment. 



