MeetirT Seed and Sabbath Day Posies 345 
not cease her gifts of country treasures. She brought 
on spring Sundays a very delightful addition to our 
Sabbath day nibblings and browsings, the most deli- 
cious mouthful of all the treasures of New England 
woods, what we called Pippins, the first tender leaves 
of the aromatic Checkerberry. In the autumn the 
spicy berries of the same plant filled many a paper 
cornucopia which was secretly conveved to us. 
It was also a universal custom among the elder 
folk to carry a Sunday posy; the stems were dis- 
creetly enwrapped with the folded handkerchief 
which also concealed the sprig of Fennel. Dean 
Hole tells us that a sprig of Southernwood was 
always seen in the Sunday smocks of English farm 
folk. Mary Howitt, in her poem, The Poor Man s 
Garden , has this verse : — 
“ And here on Sabbath mornings 
The goodman comes to get 
His Sunday nosegay — Moss Rose bud. 
White Pink, and Mignonette.’ ’ 
This shows to me that the church posy was just 
as common in England as in America; in domestic 
and social customs we can never disassociate our- 
selves from England; our ways, our deeds, are all 
English. 
Thoreau noted with pleasure when, at the last of 
June, the young men of Concord “walked slowly 
and soberly to church, in their best clothes, each 
with a Pond Lily in his hand or bosom, with as 
long a stem as he could get.” And he adds 
thereto almost the only decorous and conven- 
