1 62 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



Trinity-tide the shamrock and the viola tri- 

 colour set forth the proper lessons. Birds, 

 beasts, fishes ; mythology, history, geography ; 

 the virtues and vices what have not been linked 

 to the flowers? From what far sources have 

 come the names dear and familiar to us ; how 

 in our English speech we have kept but one 

 from Celtic days, maple ; and two, hawthorn 

 and groundsel, from Anglo-Saxon ; what we 

 have adopted from the Indians who lived here 

 before us all these belong to a subject too 

 difficult to engage us on a July day. 



If one must have colours in July, there be 

 colours ready to his hand unless one be of 

 the disagreeable brotherhood who are not con- 

 tent to wait until proper seasons arrive, and 

 who plant sweetpeas in March or, worse yet, 

 in October, that they may come earlier than 

 anyone else's. Sweetpeas should be in their 

 glory in early July. Deep planting, careful 

 stirrings of the earth about the tender stems, 

 early opportunity to climb the cotton nettings 

 which are far better than the wire ones, on 

 which the stalks are often scorched plenty of 

 water, and most assiduous cutting, never 

 plucking, of the blossoms these are the re- 



