HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



beautiful, without waiting for the story of its 

 beauty. If I were an adept, I should doubt- 

 less, like other adepts, reserve my admiration 

 exclusively for floral perfection; but I thank 

 God that my eye is not as yet so bounded. 

 The blazing Daffodils, Blue-bells, English-cow- 

 slips and Striped-grass, with which some 

 pains-taking woman in an up-country niche 

 of home, spots her little door-yard in April, 

 have won upon me before now to a tender 

 recognition of the true mission of flowers, as 

 no gorgeous parterre could do. 



With such heretical views, the reader will 

 not be surprised if I have praises and a weak- 

 ness for the commonest of flowers. Every 

 morning in August, from my chamber win- 

 dow, I see a great company of the purple 

 Convolvulus, writhing and twisting, and over- 

 running their rude trellis, while above and 

 below, and on either flank of the wild arbor, 

 their fairy chalices are beaded with the dew. 

 A Scarlet-runner is lost— so far as its green- 

 ness goes— in the tangle of a hedge-row, and 

 thrusts out its little candelabras of red and 

 white into the highway, to puzzle the passers- 

 by, who admire it,— because they do not know 

 it. A sturdy growth of Nasturtium is rioting 

 around the angle of a distant mossy wall, at 



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