CHAPTER VII 



OLD FLOWER FAVORITES 



" God does not send us strange flowers every year. 

 When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places 

 The same dear things lift up the same fair faces ; 

 The Violet is here. 



"It all comes back ; the odor, grace, and hue 

 Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; 

 No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated ; 

 It is the thing we knew." 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY, 1861. 



OT only do I love to see the 

 same dear things year after 

 year, and to welcome the same 

 odor, grace, and hue ; but I 

 love to find them in the same 

 places. 1 like a garden in 

 which plants have been grow- 

 ing in one spot for a long time, 

 where they have a fixed home and surroundings. 

 In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other 

 comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after 

 year. They look, my sister says, like long-estab- 

 lished neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they 

 had just " moved in," and didn't know each other's 

 names and faces. Plants grow better when they are 



