The Memories in Weeds 



L. H. Bailey 



T was in a Taoist Temple far 

 away in Honan. Strange were 

 the rites of the priests before 

 the idols. Every utensil, every 

 rude piece of furniture, the food 

 wherewith to find sustenance 

 for the tramps in the torturing 

 heat and wet, the outlines of 

 the clustered buildings, the 

 speech and the conduct of the few people on this border-land, were 

 all outlandish to an intruder from the Occident. The nights came 

 down like a pall of loneliness over the shaven hills, the doors were 

 bolted, and the morning was far away. 



Even the plants, the birds, and the insects were strange. But 

 there on the old stone temple-wall grew the catnip, the same 

 catnip that is under my window in America, the same that has 

 greeted me in many wanderings in other lands. What memories 

 it held, and what sweeps of the earth's surface were in its crenate 

 leaves and its odor! Farm-yards and castles, fields at evening. 

 walks where every soul was a stranger, picturesque walls and 

 ruins, lost days of youth with fragrant catnip-tea, folk-lore, an 

 herbarium at home, the years that have crowded each other so 

 fast and so fast, — these were all in the catnip plants that grew 

 in the chinks of the old wall of the temple in China. 



Often am I impressed that travelers never see the weeds, 

 and we know that other folks spurn them; and yet they are the 

 messengers sent around the world, the fore-guard of fellowship, 

 the perfect adaptation to all the conditions and needs of life, 

 the tell-tale of old routes of trade. I have learned to love the 

 weeds, so often have they been my companions on solitary jour- 

 neys. Always do I look for them, as I look for old friends. Rank 

 and raw, uncouth, broken and torn and ragged, often the bearers 

 of heavy odors, asking no quarter, yielding no treasure, the weeds 

 are the commoners on the pathways of life. 



Nor was the catnip the only old acquaintance in this place- 

 far from the thoroughfares of travel. In the yard was plantain, 



3*8 



