HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 31 1 



surprised if I have praises and a weakness for the 

 commonest of flowers. Every morning in August, 

 from my chamber window, I see a great company of 

 the purple Convolvulus, writhing and twisting, and 

 over-running their rude trellis, while above and be- 

 low, and on either flank of the wild arbor, their fairy 

 chalices are beaded with the dew. A Scarlet-runner 

 is lost so far as its greenness goes in the tangle 

 of a hedge-row, and thrusts out its little candelabras 

 of red and white into the highway, to puzzle the pas- 

 sers-by, who admire it, because they do not know it. 

 A sturdy growth of Nasturtium is rioting around the 

 angle of a distant mossy wall, at the end of a woody 

 copse so far away from all parterres, that it seems 

 to passers some strange, gorgeous wild-flower ; and 

 yet its blaze of orange and crimson is as common and 

 vulgar as the wood-fire upon a farmer's hearth. Hol- 

 ly-hocks so far away you cannot tell if they be 

 double or single (they are all single) lift their stately 

 yellows and whites in the edge of the shrubbery; 

 Phloxes, purple and white, hem them in ; and at their 

 season a wilderness of Roses bloom in the tangled 

 thicket. 



Dotted about here and there, in unexpected places 

 yet places where their color will shine are clumps 

 of yellow Lilies, of Sweet- William, of crimson Peonies, 

 of Larkspur, or even (shall I be ashamed to tell it ?) 



