room between for a thousand. Occasionally you will 

 see a dozen together, though not in a crowd ; but 

 more often the solitary blossom opens alone and far 

 removed from any of its kind. 



The lady's-slippers, however, are really social com- 

 pared with the arbutus. Here is a flower that is 

 naturally tribal, bound together by common root- 

 stalks, trailing shrubby plants that seem free to 

 possess the earth. They were doubtless here in the 

 soil before the Pilgrim came. The angels planted 

 them, I am sure, for they smell of a celestial garden. 

 The paths of heaven are carpeted with them, not 

 paved with gold. But something is the matter with 

 this earthly soil. They grow just where they were 

 originally planted and nowhere else. There was a 

 patch set in the woods three quarters of a mile, as 

 the crow flies, from my front door. That was several 

 millenniums ago. It is there still, a patch as big as 

 my hat. There are other scattered bits of it beyond, 

 but none any nearer to me, yet the soil seems the 

 same, and there are woods all the way between. 



Were it as common as the violet, perhaps some of 

 its sweetness would be lost upon us. After all, the 

 heavenly streets may be paved with gold, and instead 



in 



