128 
RURAL HOURS. 
and a tuft of the lilac phlox. Such are the blossoms to be seen 
before most doors ; and each is pretty in its own time and place ; 
one has a long-standing regard for them all, including the homely 
sun-flower, which we should be sorry to miss from its old haunts. 
Then the scarlet flowering bean, so intimately connected with 
childish recollections of the hero Jack and his wonderful adven- 
ture, may still be seen flourishing in the cottage garden, and it 
would seem to have fallen from a pod of the identical plant cele- 
brated in nursery rhyme, for it feas a great inclination for climbing, 
which is generally encouraged by training it over a window. We 
do not hear, however, of any in these parts reaching the roof in 
a single night's growth. You must go to the new lands on the 
prairies for such marvels now-a-days. They tell a wonderful story 
of a cucumber- vine somewhere beyond the great lakes, in the last 
" new settlement," probably ; the seed having been sowed one 
evening in a good bit of soil, the farmer, going to his work next 
morning, found it not only out of the ground, but grown so much 
that he was curious to measure it ; " he followed it to the end of 
his garden, over a fence, along an Indian trail, through an oak 
opening, and then seeing it stretch some distance beyond, he went 
back for his horse, but while he was saddhng old Bald the vino 
had so much the advantage of him that it reached the next clear- 
ing before he did ; there he left it to go back to dinner ; and how 
much farther it ran that day Ebenezer could not tell for cer- 
tain." 
We have no such wonders hereabouts ; and even the ambitious 
bean seldom reaches higher than a low roof ; nor is its growth 
always sufficiently luxuriant to shade the window, for it often 
shares that task with a morning-glory. The plan of these leafy 
