A MEADOW MUD-HOLE. 163 



Certainly the advantage was all upon one side, 

 but it did not lose heart at being pitted against 

 such heavy odds. Now it overshadows them all. 

 For a time they are permitted to be co-occu- 

 pants, but not for long. The lusty lotus is even 

 now reaching out to a wide stretch of marshy 

 meadow ; and there too, I doubt not, it will flour- 

 ish as at my neighbor's. It is a rightful ambition 

 to be able to sit down beneath one's own vine 

 and fig-tree. Let me add the lotus, for it has 

 come to stay. 



For how long have water-lilies been on sale 

 in our streets and at our railway stations, augur- 

 ing well for the love of aquatic plants ? And 

 that strange and scarcely known lily, alas ! of al- 

 most mephitic odor, the xerophyllum, is hawked 

 about Philadelphia streets in early June, loved for 

 its beauty despite the unfragrance ; and so too 

 this famous flower of other lands must soon ap- 

 pear, but not to sink to the level of a mere pretty 

 blossom : it is too suggestive a plant to meet 

 with such a fate. What Margaret Fuller once 

 wrote to Thoreau well bears repeating : " Seek 

 the lotus, and take a draught of rapture." 



