I 4 2 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



IX 



HOME AGAIN ! 



' Nature always wears the colours of the spirit.' 



AND now I have been tasting the 

 pleasures of roaming through my own 

 principality once more ! noting with the 

 keenest zest the changes that eighteen 

 days have wrought. I want to go all 

 over it again. In a grand red glow, 

 covering an area of 462 square feet 

 of lawn, lighting up the old hall and 

 the windows of other rooms that look 

 that way, like the reflex of some fine 

 sunrise, just beyond the south porch, lies 

 the Sumach tree (Rhus cotinus). I can- 

 not say that it stands upon the lawn, 

 as would be said of any other tree, for 

 the beautiful soft masses of it are like 

 nothing else but those great white cumuli, 

 or summer storm-clouds, steeped in a 

 crimson after-glow, when we watch their 

 changeless glory moving slowly on, upon 

 the low horizon. These sumach snows 

 however, are reddened by hot weeks of 



