PREFACE xi 



and over, ' Di Memoria nudrirsi, piu che di speme ! ' ' / 

 live on Memory more than hope. 1 Of course he does not 

 mean it in the least ! but so the tune -wears on in 

 sad, sweet, iteration. In the winter , after Christmas, 

 the holly trees in the garden shone scarlet, loaded as they 

 were with berries. We had planned to cut away several 

 branches of them, but until the birds had stript the fruit, 

 the gardener s knife was not to be lifted for the pruning. 

 Yet scarcely had ' the wise thrush ' begun to feast, when 

 down there swooped upon the hollies such flocks of field- 

 fares from the open country that, in a day the trees 

 were bare. So the poor throstles to whom of right 

 the garden fruits belong starved and were found dead 

 in numbers. The motto of wild Nature is always neces- 

 sarily, ''Live, and let die who may? And thus there 

 is many a small tragedy enacted often, in the garden. 

 One of the most pathetic perhaps, when a tiny mother- 

 bird was found dead in a thorny brier, pierced to the 

 heart by thorns in tJie Rose-Home of her choice. 



At this very time, as I write, through the open 

 window comes fitfully the complaint of a solitary dove 



