138 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



life with a cheerfulness which was a pot-pourri 

 of itself. To make pot-pourri is, I take it, a 

 test of gentle blood, and more things are needed 

 than rose leaves and spices to properly fill the 

 Chinese jars, which the old-time ladies handled 

 so tenderly. 



When I die I shall have gone through life 

 and out of it with a wish ungratified a wish 

 which has followed me through all of my con- 

 scious years. It is to have a button-rose for 

 my very own : to hold it in my hand, and put 

 it in a vase a glass vase and to look at it 

 and love it until it begins to show faint signs of 

 withering, and then to press it in a book 

 to keep for always. It has been ages since I 

 saw one of the stiff little bushes that bore the 

 fairy roses, and more ages still since I saw one 

 of the flat pinky-crimson roselets. I never 

 touched one. I do not know if they were 

 fragrant, since between the very small person 

 which held my eager soul in those lost years, 

 and the scrubby little plants, which grew only 

 in one border that I knew, there was a great 

 gulf fixed, which I dare not think of passing. 

 On my way to and from school I hung on the 

 picket-fence which bordered the gulf, hoping 



