IN ELYSIAN FIELDS 171 



windows of the soul to poetry and to beauty in after life. 

 It is a gift of inheritance abiding with the years and be- 

 yond the changes of fickle fortune. 



Little yellow-haired Barbara lives in a fine garden 

 planned by a garden architect. It is superb, a landscape 

 picture in masses of foliage of varied greens in dense 

 shade, broken by patches of filtered lights where the sun 

 scatters living gold on a carpet of emerald; and all along 

 the borders wave ribbons of color as perfect as if painted 

 from the palette of a master artist as truly they were. 

 Little Barbara walks up and down the flowery ways, and 

 perchance stops to pluck a clover bloom in the grass, or a 

 shepherd' s-purse that through some mysterious dispensa- 

 tion of Providence escaped the lawn mower and the eagle 

 eye of the garden architect. 



And while now and then she stops to smell a fragrant 

 bud or to watch a grumbling bee dust himself with gold 

 as he forces his way to the treasures of snapdragon or nas- 

 turtium, she never dares to take a flower for her own, 

 though they hold up their pretty heads with mute 

 affection and seem to talk to her in flower language. 

 When no one is watching, Barbara throws conscience to 

 the winds, and hunts the loose panel of the iron fence 

 and slips off down the road to the washerwoman's. There 

 the children, one and all, make clover chains and pick the 

 four-o' clocks blooming industriously in the chicken yard, 

 where hens are dusting themselves under the sunflowers 



