59 



odorous it would smell as do these blos- 

 soms. There is nothing in life so delight- 

 ful as to lie prone upon warm grass under 

 a big, spreading walnut, standing alone in 

 acres of pasture-land, with May sun drip- 

 ping gold through the quivering leaves, 

 with cattle lowing all about, with birds 

 nesting in the near thicket, and the scent 

 of crushed catkins coining strong and sweet 

 from your hands. 



The crab-apple is Dame Nature's para- 

 dox ; one of those contradictions wherewith 

 she delights slyly to confound us. For is 

 not the blossom as sweet as the fruit is 

 sour ? Is not the grace of branch and leaf 

 offset by the prickliness of long thorns? 

 Far beyond the hawthorn it is the true 

 flower of May. It is as though creative 

 power had gathered the dawn and the dew, 

 the grace of rippling water, the sweetness 

 of true love, and of them shaped these 

 dainty, pink-flushed flowerets, then set and 

 fenced them about with a 'hedge of thorns. 

 Though we have hawthorn and haws, black 

 and red galore, they cannot be named in 

 the same day with the crab-apple. Indeed, 

 there is but one blossom -tree that can 

 that immortelle, the honey- locust. The 

 man, the woman, who knows not, loves not, 



