Meetin' Seed and Sabbath Day Posies 345 



not cease her gifts of country treasures. She brought 

 on spring Sundays a very delightful addition to our 

 Sabbath day nibblings and browsings, the most deli- 

 cious mouthful of all the treasures of New England 

 woods, what we called Pippins, the first tender leaves 

 of the aromatic Checkerberry. In the autumn the 

 spicy berries of the same plant filled many a paper 

 cornucopia which was secretly conveyed to us. 



It was also a universal custom among the elder 

 folk to carry a Sunday posy; the stems were dis- 

 creetly enwrapped with the folded handkerchief 

 which also concealed the sprig of Fennel. Dean 

 Hole tells us that a sprig of Southernwood was 

 always seen in the Sunday smocks of English farm 

 folk. Mary Howitt, in her poem, The Poor Man's 

 Garden, has this verse : 



" And here on Sabbath mornings 

 The goodman comes to get 

 His Sunday nosegay Moss Rose bud, 

 White Pink, and Mignonette." 



This shows to me that the church posy was just 

 as common in England as in America; in domestic 

 and social customs we can never disassociate our- 

 selves from England; our ways, our deeds, are all 

 English. 



Thoreau noted with pleasure when, at the last of 

 June, the young men of Concord "walked slowly 

 and soberly to church, in their best clothes, each 

 with a Pond Lily in his hand or bosom, with as 

 long a stem as he could get." And he adds 

 thereto almost the only decorous and conven- 



