APRIL 75 



words " Meet-her-in-the-entry, kiss-her-in-the- 

 buttery," which Mrs Earle assures us is a name 

 only to be excelled in singularity by the folk- 

 name of a stonecrop, which Miss Jeykll reports 

 " Welcome home, husband, be you ever so 

 drunk." I would like to think that no one but 

 Patient Griselda ever grew stonecrops ! 



That the seedsmen do not list this dear old 

 friend is no matter : it is even better so, since 

 a flower so intensely human ought not to be sold, 

 any more than love should be sold. It should 

 pass from hand to hand between people to 

 whom it is dear. Once received, it knows its 

 own, and will camp down with the utmost 

 composure, and with all the good will in the 

 world in precisely that corner in which it is 

 most needed, and once there will offer their 

 bright little posies almost every day in the 

 year. In 1587 Gerarde wrote of them : 



" The floure is in form and figure like the 

 Violet, and for the most part of the same Big- 

 ness, of three sundry colours purple, yellow, 

 white or blew, by reason of the beauty and 

 braverie of which colours they are very pleas- 

 ing to the eye, for smel they have little or 

 none." With this statement I beg to differ 



