40 THE REPOET OF THE Xo. 36 



Children notice very small things, but their looks, I believe, are far from 

 critical. At any rate I had never thought of counting the legs of crabs and 

 frogs, either out of curiosity or from a sense of precaution; though, I well 

 remember how I tried with a brother of mine to count the legs of a centipede 

 after being told what its name meant. But, beyond all question, at the stage when 

 we arc ourselves still quadrupeds and creeping face downwards, like reptiles, over 

 the surface of the earth, nothing is too small to be noticed. 



It was in these days — i.e., before I had grown up into a biped more or less 

 star-gazing — that I made the acquaintance of certain minute spiders known to 

 those in sexless garments as " soldiers," and the name seemed very appropriate, 

 for they were bright scarlet and bore on their back the distinct impression of 

 a knapsack. " Clocks " and " jumping-jacks " were also among the marvels of 

 what to every child is a new world full of all kinds of wonderful sights and 

 sounds ; " jumping-jacks " were a small elater or click-beetle, and " clocks " were 

 weevils with a stupendous power of grasping and clinging in their six pairs of 

 toes. Another mystery we soon got to the heart of was the little blobs of spittle 

 that appeared on the stems of meadow-grass where we played; and at the core 

 of these queer little froth-cocoons we found the tiny atomy that makes them, still 

 spitting for all its life was worth. Quite a formidable monster in this nursery 

 land, I remember, was the "' devil's coach-horse," a large black staphylinid or 

 cock-tail beetle, that when cornered would turn at bav threateningly, raising its 

 head and front up from the ground and arching its tail over its back; even snails 

 • — as the nursery rhyme reminds the more forgetful of us, with their sudden out- 

 thrustings of long horns, were a fearsome beast not to be approached without 

 due caution. 



All this time flowers and ferns and mosses were an equal fascination, and I 

 don't think there was a day when T didn't bring home a handful of these treasures 

 to be told their names; daisies and gowans, buttercups and dandelions, the tiny 

 blue veronica of the hedgerow that we knew and loved as " bird's eyes," the little 

 wild pansy or heart's ease, baby brother to the " Johnny-jump-ups " of our cottage 

 gardens; then, as we went further afield, poppies and cornflowers, dogroses and 

 sweetbrier, the primrose and the periwinkle, ragged-robin and cuckoo flower, wild^ 

 thyme, eyebright, fox-gloves, bluebells and forget-me-nots. The very names make 

 music in the memory ; and it was just the names that Ave wanted to know. I 

 don't think once heard they were ever forgotten. These names and images cling- 

 all through life and gather about them whole clusters of fond associations of 

 time and space. In childhood, perhaps, they are little more than sense im- 

 pressions, but as the spirit ripens into maturer years, they become informed 

 with emotion, filling our imagination with fragrance and colour; such memories 

 are good wholesome food for manhood's prime and the sweet solace of old age. 



About this time my father's hobby of gardening seized hold of me ; more, 1 

 suspect, for the gardener's sake than the garden's. One's father in those days 

 was the strongest possible proof that giants if not gods still walked the earth 

 in the semblance of men ; and to help him water the garden M-as to be in paradise. 

 I am afraid my help was little more than a hindrance, but I still see tiiyself 

 staggering along behind him with a watering pot; he was so absorbed in his work 

 that the self-constituted under-gardener was often forgotten. I have sometimes 

 since suspected this particular Olympian of being absent-minded. 



He was a great smoker and nearly always had his pipe going: for use out of 

 doors he carried a box of " fusees," a wonderful long-headed wooden match that 



