LITTLE GARDENS 



peculiar ghastliness, roused unfeeling laughter 

 from the immune. 



There is one other vine, which we seldom 

 cultivate as such, yet that is useful where it is 

 not desired to carry vegetation to a greater 

 height than five or six feet, and that is the nas- 

 turtium. This usually grows so thinly when it 

 is carried upright that there is no danger of its 

 throwing the shade that the larger and heavier 

 climbers will cast. And of course, there are the 

 sweet peas, but we are to regard them less as 

 vines than as garden plants. Vines are rather 

 more human than shrubs. They are selfish. 

 They grasp for support, and do not care what it 

 is they rise by, so long as they rise. We say that 

 the plant does not think, and possibly it does not, 

 but its career symbolizes all life, and nothing in 

 the physiology of the walking races is more won- 

 derful than its adjustment of pistil and stamens 

 to propagation by means of the insect that feeds 

 upon it. Yet I am by no means sure that the 

 vine does not see and feel and think, and in the 

 wilful and unaccountable conduct of morning- 

 glories and sweet peas in reaching across spaces 

 for support — how otherwise do they know It is 

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