May-Day out of Town. 93 



out of existence, and a bit of chickweed or a 

 mat of whitlow-grass here and there star the 

 stunted grass. But where is the honey for the 

 patient bees ? Surely not in such flowers as these, 

 and their beauty alone is not an attraction ; beauty 

 that needs a magnifier that man may see it. Is it 

 an inherited instinct that brings the bees? 

 Scarcely that ; but the day was when the bloom- 

 ing clover tempted the whole hive. 



Everywhere there is ruin nature cannot wholly 

 conceal. The old apple-tree is the last vestige of 

 an orchard, and beyond it, where the ground 

 slightly rises, are the scattered stones of a founda- 

 tion-wall. Better than these, even, to recall the 

 past, there grows a dwarfed lilac-bush hard by, 

 with no other evidence of life than a few half- 

 expanded leaves. Wild life, save the few birds 

 and omnipresent insects, has long since disap- 

 peared, and this it is makes the song of every 

 sparrow heard to-day sad, when we pause to think 

 of what has been. The sparrow now perched on 

 the lone lilac sings sweetly as ever, but what of 

 the merry host that thronged the vanished lilac 

 hedge and dreamed of no better world than the 



