CHAPTER XIV 

 ROSES AND PHILOLOGY 



F not with sunshine from the central 

 and chief orb of our solar system, 

 June came in with the beneficent 

 sunshine of peace after a painful and 

 protracted war, and I do not doubt that the whole 

 nation glowed as I did with the satisfaction of re- 

 lief, the removal of a heavy oppressive cloud, and 

 the prospect of reconciliation with a people with 

 whom we had for so long been battling at such 

 terrible loss and suffering on both sides. 



On the first of June I found a " May beetle," as 

 the Germans call it, a cockchafer, in the gar- 

 den, an insect I had not seen for many years. I 

 had, however, very vivid recollections of it from a 

 plague of cockchafers I had witnessed in Ger- 

 many somewhere about the year 1860. On that 

 occasion such countless numbers appeared that 

 the entire district was literally covered with them, 

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