246 East and West 
a robust suggestion of the open, a perfume 
that invigorates; balsam, a boreal impression, 
a whiff of the North. The fragrance of berries 
and the bloom on the fruit, the marvellous 
gradations of colour, serve as so many handles 
by which we may grasp with our senses this 
fleeting beauty of Nature, ephemeral but for- 
ever renewing itself. I drink the blue of 
gentians and the red of cardinal lobelias and 
scarlet buglers; I plunge into the golden fields 
of baeria and bathe in the yellow flood of 
poppies. The flavour of sassafras takes me 
far afield and the odour of balsam stirs the old 
Norse blood in me; whispering pines tell me 
many things and invoke those ghostly selves 
which once had sylvan form and dwelt amidst 
these forests. A garden—a continental gar- 
den—means much, is a part of oneself, so 
intimately is it related through eyes and ears 
and nose to that interior world where thought 
arises and moods and feelings come and go 
like clouds across the sky. 
In this wild garden it is interesting to 
observe how plants correspond to their par- 
ticular nook or corner and seem to fit into it, 
as if they had been set out in those places 
peculiarly adapted to their needs. Take, 
for example, the shrubs: how congenial are 
