86 THE JOY OF GARDENS 



many a one the sweet Williams have been the first. 

 Here they are to-day in crimson, sanguine, and white. 

 Stately and fringed, they have come for their summer 

 visit. It was a happy thought to set them where they 

 made a little hedge separating the herb garden from the 

 posies. Long ago the old-man, lavender, thyme, and 

 balm had a place among the hardy annuals in hopes that 

 observant guests would come upon them unawares and 

 be glad. And then followed the discovery that few take 

 pleasure in odors, and fewer are observant; and the 

 lemon verbena looked an alien, the old-man became 

 shabby from the nippings of careless fingers, and the 

 balm languished disconsolate. 



And so a sunny corner behind the sweet Williams was 

 planted for sweet odors of old days. It seems that the 

 talent to enjoy fragrance is after all a gift of highly 

 developed senses. Even more than the sense of taste the 

 nostrils have the power to touch the springs of a forgot- 

 ten past, and to one a crushed calycanthus bud brings 

 the picture of a Pennsylvania hamlet with luxuriant 

 gardens back of green-shuttered houses nestled deep in 

 the Cumberland Valley; a dried sweetbrier is the magic 

 of a romance; a spray of lemon verbena conjures memory 

 of a tiny red prayer book, a high-backed pew, and long, 

 long sermons while the birds were singing in the weeping 

 willows overhanging moss-grown gravestones beyond the 

 church door. 



