8 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



How charming is the contrast of the straight lines and stems of 

 daffodils with the round low forms of pansies, for instance, be- 

 low them; yet how perfectly the two types of flowers are brought 

 together by the yellows in both. It is a simple matter in such a 

 climate as ours to have fresh crops of pansies every spring from 

 seed sown the August before. This we do on our small place, 

 getting perhaps half an ounce of seed from the finest American 

 source, — some day the whole world will be reopened, — sowing 

 it at once and transplanting seedlings in September to their 

 permanent place. This year that place was the upper garden- 

 walk where a magnificent purple pansy, known by the unpre- 

 possessing title of "Elks' Purple," was thickly set along either 

 border of the walk for fifty feet. Among these pansies in Oc- 

 tober we planted long groups of yellow tulips, of varying times 

 of bloom. These were all in clear tones of yellow, from light to 

 dark, and in the season now upon us should make a delicious 

 planting of spring flowers. 



The clustering habit of the pansy is half its charm. " Cuddle- 

 me-to-you" happens to be one of its old English names. Its 

 form, color, and texture set it apart from all other early flowers 

 for rich, yet modest, beauty. As for the sentiment which always 

 hovers about the flower, I will let others speak — as speak they 

 do in ways which seldom please me — and will only echo, in 

 ending, the remark of an old English writer on pansies, that 

 they make "a pretty Show in Borders." 



"I was gazing," writes Havelock Ellis, "at some tulips, the 

 supreme image in our clime of gayety in nature, their globes of 

 petals opening into chalices and painted with spires of scarlet 

 and orange wondrously mingled with a careless freedom that 

 never goes astray : brilliant cups of delight serenely poised on the 

 firm shoulders of their stalks, incarnate images of flame under 

 the species of Eternity." 



