126 MY FARM. 



streets of Paris. It was a dwarfish specimen, arid 

 the nodding blossoms (only a pair of them) gave a 

 modest dip over the edge of the red crock, as if they 

 felt themselves in a country of strangers. But it 

 was the true daisy for all this, and I greeted it with 

 a welcoming franc of purchase money, and carried it 

 to my rooms, and established it upon my balcony, 

 where, while the flower lasted, I made a new Pic- 

 ciola of it. And as I watered it, and watched its 

 green buttons of buds unfolding the white leaflets, 

 wide visions of rough New England grasslands 

 came pouring with the sunshine into the Paris win- 

 dow, and with them, the drowsy song of locusts, 

 the gushing melody of Bob-o'-Lincolns, until the 

 drum-beat at the opposite Caserne drowned it, and 

 broke the dream. 



These living and growing souvenirs of far-away 

 places, carry a wealth of interest and of suggestion 

 about them, which no merely inanimate object can 

 do. I have flowers fairly pressed, not having wholly 

 lost their color, which I plucked from the walls of 

 Rome, and others from a house-court of the buried 

 Pompeii ; but they are as dead as the guide books 

 that describe the places. 



It is different wholly with a little potted Ivy 

 which a friend has sent from the walls of Kenil- 

 worth. It clambers over a rustic frame within the 



