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leaves ; another chapter, then more brook, until just as 

 the sun was setting and we turned our faces homeward 

 to read the last chapters before the great fireplace 

 of the " House of Low Ceihngs," I espied the clump 

 of closed gentians and made them mine, mine along 

 with the memories of a book heard under circum- 

 stances which made it seem the greatest pastoral 

 ever written. And as I dug the gentians the author 

 remembered an old legend which told of their bloom- 

 ing on a certain ancient hill where there was enacted 

 the greatest of all human tragedies, when men put 

 to death the gentlest of all men. The flowers gazed 

 with sadness on that Crucifixion, then closed their 

 eyes forever more. 



So beyond all other flowers of the garden, the wild 

 ones are t^ose most haloed by associations — asso- 

 ciations which can even make a Lord Bishop of a 

 mere " Jack-in-the-pulpit." 



123 



