138 Old Time Gardens 



homely names in our everyday speech. I am always 

 touched in Endymion that the only flowers named 

 as " a thing of beauty that is a joy forever " are Daf- 

 fodils " with the green world they live in." 



In Daffodils I like the "old fat-headed sort with 

 nutmeg and cinnamon smell and old common Eng- 

 lish names Butter-and-eggs, Codlins-and-cream, 

 Bacon and eggs." The newer ones are more slender 

 in bud and bloom, more trumpet-shaped, and are 

 commonplace of name instead of common. In Vir- 

 ginia the name of a variety has become applied to a 

 family, and all Daffodils are called Butter-and-eggs 

 by the people. 



On spring mornings the Tulips fairly burn with 

 a warmth, which makes them doubly welcome 

 after winter. Emerson ever able to draw a pic- 

 ture in two lines to show the heart of everything 

 in a single sentence thus paints them : 



"The gardens fire with a joyful blaze 

 Of Tulips in the morning's rays." 



" Tulipase do carry so stately and delightful a 

 form, and do abide so long in their bravery, that 

 there is no Lady or Gentleman of any worth that is 

 not caught with this delight," wrote the old her- 

 balist Parkinson. Bravery is an ideal expression for 

 Tulips. 



It is with something of a shock that we read the 

 words of Philip Hamerton in The Sylvan Year, that 

 nature is not harmonious in the spring, but is only 

 in the way of becoming so. He calls it the time of 

 crudities, like the adolescence of the mind. He says, 



