BEES COURT THE CLOVER 105 



were set the busy humming bees to make work and play 

 at the feet of the queenly hollyhocks. 



Many a time we have blessed that hour of decision, for 

 it is one of the very few corners of the garden to which 

 we dare take a guest in confidence that he will not lift a 

 critical eyebrow and comment on a might-have-been. To 

 be a truly social spirit in a wide circle of friends it is 

 necessary to cultivate an amiability to accept the criticism 

 of those who have not learned the A B C of tact. 



Only one remark lingers concerning the hollyhocks, 

 and that was from an oversensitive person who said they 

 reminded him of dairymaids, and ought to be relegated to 

 kitchen gardens to give the artistic note to pumps and 

 milk pans. Sheep in a painted landscape affected him in 

 the same unpleasant manner as they belonged to a sheep- 

 fold and the market place, why drive them into our deco- 

 rations? This one commonplace out of mind, the 

 hollyhocks present a fine tableau of dignified plants with 

 noble blossoms attended by adoring servitors of honey- 

 seeking bees. 



Once in a long time, and always in an out-of-the-way 

 corner of the world, in Woods Hole, the eastern shore of 

 Chesapeake Bay, or in Devon, England, lives a fanatical 

 hollyhockian. He or she plants hollyhocks for variety, 

 glories in numbers and queer sorts, knows them by name, 

 raises them from seed or grafts, plants cuttings, divides 

 roots, and does things that we should never dare to do. 



