A Little Maryland Garden 175 
he loves his plants. When any one offers 
to burn my dead leaves, or wheel them out 
of the garden and throw them away, I feel 
a sort of indignant wonder at such a want of 
sympathy with the life of the garden. And 
as I rake them intopiles, there is that 
faintly smoky smell on the autumn air, a 
sort of lassitude before the sting of frost, a 
sense of gentle melancholy, that is the spe- 
cial charm of September. For the inevita- 
ble is here, the fall of the leaf means the 
dying of the fires of summer, and the long 
waiting till another spring. 
Our old gardener says of September, 
“This will be a very good time to collect 
from the woods, fields, and swamps some of 
the favourites of the Most High,” and ‘‘In 
Europe plants are not rejected because they 
are indigenous; on the contrary, they are 
cultivated with due care. And yet here 
we cultivate many foreign trifles and neglect 
the profusion of beauties so bountifully 
bestowed upon us by the hand of nature.” 
This fall treasures were brought from the 
