THE USES OF ADVERSITY 53 



perhaps the rain was not so bad after all, and that flowers 

 have a wonderful gift of looking out for themselves. 



As we lean over the garden fence, the heart leaps at the 

 sight of dandelion gold. The host arrived in a single 

 night, whole colonies and companies, to possess the land. 

 Their advance sentinels came days ago, but who had 

 pictured such an invasion, lavishly spreading carpets of 

 purest gold along the roadside*? 



The dandelion gatherer is harvesting in the fields 

 yonder, the grass cutter stands with his lawn mower in 

 the middle of the road and knits his brows over the mis- 

 chievous plants that betrayed him while every well- 

 behaved creature behind the fence was shrinking before 

 the storm. His crony, an old gardener, comes along and, 

 leaning on his rake, confesses that he has a tenderness for 

 dandelions; that he likes to see a disk of gold among the 

 dewy grass of the early morning; that he would invite a 

 wee crimson-tipped daisy to make free with his lawn, and 

 had smuggled in a camomile because it shed a fragrance 

 when the foot crushed it while treading the grass. 



These give the human touch to the most perfect of 

 seeded lawns, something to make the heart beat faster 

 for beauty's sake, a modest flower to recall a poet, a blos- 

 som to breathe fragrance and to entertain the errant bee. 



Thus the law of perfection is put to naught if you 

 lend an ear to the personal equation; but, as John Sed- 

 ding, prince of garden lovers, has said, while men are 



