Old Time Gardens 
148 
Persia that it ought really to be a native plant. 
Its very color seems typical of New England ; some 
parts of celestial blue, with more of warm pink, 
blended and softened by that shading of sombre 
gray ever present in New England life into a dis- 
tinctive color known everywhere as lilac — a color 
grateful, quiet, pleasing, what Thoreau called a 
“ tender, civil, cheerful color.” Its blossoming at 
the time of Election Day, that all-important New 
England holiday, gave it another New England sig- 
nificance. 
There is no more emblematic flower to me than 
the Lilac ; it has an association of old homes, of 
home-making and home interests. On the country 
farm, in the village garden, and in the city yard, the 
lilac was planted wherever the home was made, and 
it attached itself with deepest roots, lingering some- 
times most sadly but sturdily, to show where the 
home once stood. 
Let me tell of two Lilacs of sentiment. One of 
them is shown on page 149 ; a glorious Lilac tree 
which is one of a group of many full-flowered, pale- 
tinted ones still growing and blossoming each spring 
on a deserted homestead in old Narragansett. 
They bloom over the grave of a fine old house, and 
the great chimney stands sadly in their midst as a 
gravestone. “ Hopewell,” ill-suited of name, was 
the home of a Narragansett Robinson famed for 
good cheer, for refinement and luxury, and for a 
lovely garden, laid out with cost and care and filled 
with rare shrubs and flowers. Perhaps these Lilacs 
were a rare variety in their day, being pale of tint ; 
