ESCAPED FROM GARDENS 189 



This notion is a pleasant fiction. The botanist does not 

 romance when he says that they have appropriated vices 

 as well as virtues; that among them are parasites and 

 thieves ; that saints and martyrs of the wronged and help- 

 less of the plant world cry out for mercy, and should have 

 a reward from the accounts written down in the records 

 kept by the guardian angels of all who suffer without 

 reason. 



Naughty Tommy and silly Jenny making mud pies on 

 the edge of the prairie may tell a thing or two from the 

 tragic histories of creatures that vegetate. They know 

 that a tribe of plantain crept across the front yard, 

 crushed humbler plants out of existence, and kept incar- 

 cerated within a paling fence until the intruders were 

 uprooted. 



Have they not heard of the crimes of wheat rust, of en- 

 croaching tares and Canada thistles? Have they not 

 wept over the ban against the starry blossoms that make 

 the daisy chains? And now, as they peep above the tall 

 grass, another army of tramps rushes down the dusty 

 road, tumbling before the Indian summer breeze, joying 

 in its balmy breath, and paying toll to all the roadside 

 fertility by showering crops of seed for next year's har- 

 vest tramps indeed more dangerous than any from the 

 hosts of the unwashed from the London slums. 



"Russian thistle out for mischief," said the farmer, 

 stopping his team. "This is the first bunch of the pest 



