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Who shall name or number the tangle of 

 vines ? Here be wild-grape, star-flowered 

 clematis, poison -oak, scarlet trumpet-vine, 

 Virginia creeper, bitter-sweet, cross-vine, par- 

 tridge-berry, beside half a hundred name- 

 less things instinct with graceful life. This 

 one, a mat of wreathy green, is a mark of 

 the richest soil. It feeds and flourishes 

 only on the fatness of light, black mould. 

 Only the root is perennial. The soft, twin- 

 ing stem does not peep up till May shines 

 hot and splendid. It comes, though, with a 

 rush, and is coiling twenty feet in air ere the 

 long, long June days usher in high summer. 



It has big, ovate leaves, growing by fours 

 around the green stem. You would never 

 look twice at its white, inconspicuous, clus- 

 tered flowers, that spring from the axil of 

 each fan of leaves. Wait, though, for the 

 seed round, green, translucent, in pendu- 

 lous clusters as big as, more graceful than, 

 Malaga grapes. What Faun or Dryad could 

 wish a lovelier crown ? 



Unless, indeed, she lingered till the coral- 

 vine was in berry. The flexile, green, tough, 

 slender stem has almost the strength of steel, 

 and is beset all its length with waxy leaves 

 of richest green, with shining clusters of red, 

 red berries, whose color, intense and glow- 



