CHAPTER VII 
OLD FLOWER FAVORITES 
“ God does not send us strange flowers every year. 
When the spring winds blow o’er the pleasant places 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces ; 
The Violet is here. 
“ It all comes back ; the odor, grace, and hue 
Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; 
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated ; 
It is the thing we knew.” 
— Adeline D. T. Whitney, i 8 6 i . 
)T only do I love to see the 
same dear things year after 
year, and to welcome, the same 
odor, grace, and hue ; but I 
love to find them in the same 
places. 1 like a garden in 
which plants have been grow- 
ing in one spot tor a long time, 
where they have a fixed home and surroundings. 
In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other 
comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after 
year. They look, my sister says, like long-estab- 
lished neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they 
had just “ moved in,” and didn’t know each other’s 
names and faces. Plants grow better when they are 
M 
161 
