The Sign of the Shad-hush 
room between for a thousand. Occasionally you will 
see a dozen together, though not in a crowd; but 
more often the solitary blossom opens alone and far 
removed from any of its kind. 
The lady’s-slippers, however, are really social com- 
pared with the arbutus. Here is a flower that is 
naturally tribal, —— bound together by common root- 
stalks, trailing shrubby plants that seem free to 
possess the earth. They were doubtless here in the 
soil before the Pilgrim came. The angels planted 
them, I am sure, for they smell of a celestial garden. 
The paths of heaven are carpeted with them, not 
paved with gold. But something is the matter with 
this earthly soil. They grow just where they were 
originally planted and nowhere else. There was a 
patch set in the woods three quarters of a mile, as 
the crow flies, from my front door. That was several 
millenniums ago. It is there still, a patch as big as 
my hat. There are other scattered bits of it beyond, 
but none any nearer to me, yet the soil seems the 
same, and there are woods all the way between. 
Were it as common as the violet, perhaps some of 
its sweetness would be lost upon us. After all, the 
heavenly streets may be paved with gold, and instead 
Tit 
