SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 43 



clump apart, and the larkspur tangled with Shasta daisies, 

 and order and harmony reign among these simple folk. 



As in life we should choose friends for youth and 

 friends for age, some for the idle hour and many for the 

 everyday of passing years, in a like humor we may as- 

 semble our flower companies to keep pace with the moods 

 from January until Christmas. Why haste to plant all 

 the garden at once, when it is so important, and the 

 working and planning are a delight 1 ? Its beauty, after 

 all, is the reflection of the inner taste of the ardent 

 gardener. 



When to-morrow you stop to look across a lawn where 

 bloodroot is nodding its cap among the hepaticas under 

 the shrubbery, and where trilliums are lifting the mold 

 under the snowberry bushes, and there are signs of colum- 

 bine and shooting stars, you may smile to yourself that all 

 that simplicity is like a charming verse of poetry, the fine 

 picture of a divine thought of one who roved the wild- 

 flower haunts. 



And as you go down the street, and the tender grass 

 waves about clumps of sunny jonquils, and there the sun 

 shines warmest where a colony of narcissus poeticus is 

 swaying, and in prim rows the tulip blades have cut stiff 

 ranks across the lawn, you may say to yourself that here 

 is one who has hoped and is now having high festival be- 

 cause of dreams coming true. 



Then perchance, as you note the ruddy buds of peonies 



