SHRUBS 



from the close neighborhood of the central trunk 

 a multitude of lesser stalks, and massing so 

 densely as almost to exclude the light from the 

 earth beneath it. If these suckers are not 

 promptly trimmed off, or hoed out of the earth, 

 the difficulty of removing them is much in- 

 creased, for In a few months the wood grows so 

 tough as to resist the hoe. These shoots will 

 rollick upward into the body of the bush, and so 

 it Interferes with itself, lessening the growth of 

 its flowers and starving such leaves as can not 

 gain the light. If early separated from the 

 bush and set out In new ground, the suckers will 

 become healthy bushes of themselves, in a few 

 seasons. The lilac is one of the elements In the 

 rural picture that a country boy will not dismiss 

 from his memory. He recalls the white and the 

 pink-purple clusters that flourished in scores, 

 sometimes in hundreds, over the bush that stood 

 at the door, and that are still blooming in lonely 

 spots among the hills where men's eyes rarely 

 see them, for the houses they beautified are gone 

 and the farms deserted. He recalls their fra- 

 grance in moments of reverie that happily come 

 to him in the moil of town. He remembers 

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