Childhood in a Garden 337 



The sixty-two folk names of the Foxglove give 

 ample proof of its closeness to humanity ; it is a 

 familiar flower, a home flower. Of these many 

 names I never heard but two in New England, and 

 those but once ; an old Irish gardener called the 

 flowers Fairy Thimbles, and an English servant, 

 Pops this from the well-known habit of popping 

 the petals on the palm of the hand. We used to 

 build little columns of these Foxgloves by thrusting 

 one within another, alternating purple and white ; 

 and we wore them for gloves, and placed them as 

 foolscaps on the heads of tiny dolls. The beauty 

 of the Foxglove in the garden is unquestioned ; the 

 spires of white bloom are, as Cotton Mather said of 

 a pious and painful Puritan preacher, "a shining 

 and white light in a golden candlestick improved for 

 the sweet felicity of Mankind and to the honour 

 of our Maker." 



Opposite page 340 is a glimpse of a Box-edged 

 garden in Worcester, whose blossoming has been a 

 delight to me every summer of my entire life. In 

 my childhood this home was that of flower-loving 

 neighbors who had an established and constant sys- 

 tem of exchange with my mother and other neigh- 

 bors of flowers, plants, seeds, slips, and bulbs. The 

 garden was serene with an atmosphere of worthy old 

 age ; you wondered how any man so old could so 

 constantly plant, weed, prune, and hoe until you 

 saw how he loved his flowers, and how his wife loved 

 them. The Roses, Peonies, and Flower de Luce 

 in this garden are sixty years old, and the Box also ; 

 the shrubs are almost trees. Nothing seems to be 



