156 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



an adventurous nurseryman had given advertisement 

 of his name and calling by an ingenious arrangement 

 of his box-borders in gigantic lettering not, perhaps, 

 a very legitimate rural decoration, or such as a severe 

 taste would commend and yet I cannot but think 

 that a little trail of fiery flowers, scattered, as it were, 

 upon a bank of lawn, and spelling out some graceful 

 name (of the homestead), which should be discerni- 

 ble only one swift moment as the train flashed by 

 while to one looking forward or backward, it should 

 be only a careless ribbon of flowers flecking the green 

 I say I can hardly fancy that this would smack of 

 tawdriness. However this may be, devices there are, 

 innumerable, for conferring grace upon such sudden 

 slopes as I have hinted at : a slope to the north will 

 carry admirably its tufts of rhododendron and of 

 kalmia, or its confused tangle of hemlocks and Law- 

 son Cypress. 



The English ivy, too, will grow admirably in such 

 situations, upon a ground surface, taking root here 

 and there, and covering all the lesser inequalities 

 with its glossy network of leaves. Such condition 

 of growth, moreover, (trailing over the surface of the 

 ground,) insures protection by snows ; or, if that be 

 wanting, a thin coating of litter spread over the 

 creeper will be an ample defence. The ivy is winter- 

 killed, not so much by extreme cold, as by sudden 



