Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
Golden Amaranth. There is a Mexican legend that mari- 
golds sprang from the blood of the old Mexicans who fell 
victims to the lust for gold of the Spanish Conquistadores. 
The snowberries and the hips and haws are abundant just 
now, and the hollies positively gorgeous, but I should 
admire them all much more did I not feel they are the 
heralds of Winter, that dreary season when one has to live 
on Patience and Hope. The rockets are well named by our 
American cousins “ Farewell Summers.” Hollies seem to 
do particularly well in Scotland. I know of at least two 
places where the holly hedges are said to be fifty feet high. 
In Pliny’s days holly was planted near houses to keep off 
lightning, it is also said to keep off witches, while a decoction 
of bark and leaves was good for bruises. Holly crowns 
were presented at weddings by the old Romans in token of 
congratulation, and possibly with the view of averting ill- 
luck from the married pair. Butcher’s-broom, which is 
used as a substitute for holly at Christmas in the English 
churches on the Riviera, grows in some gardens hereabouts ; 
an old name for it is Kneeholly; I suppose because it 
seldom grows higher than one’s knee. 
How pretty chrysanthemums are — the “golden flowers”! 
There is a quaint legend current in the Black Forest how 
a poor woodcutter coming home one evening in the snow 
found a poor little child. He took it home and cherished 
it, and his family gave it a share of the scanty Christmas 
Eve supper. Before lying down to rest the little wanderer 
prayed aloud for the people who were so kind to him. In 
the morning, lo and behold, it was the little Christ-child 
who was among them ! The woodcutter and his family 
fell on their knees, and when at last they looked up the 
Christ-child had disappeared. The next day the wood- 
cutter, passing the place where he had found the little lost 
child, saw in the snow a cluster of golden flowers which he 
took home. I read the other day an interesting description 
by Alfred Parsons, the flower-painter, of some curious 
chrysanthemums he saw in Japan. At Tokio, in a street of 
chrysanthemum gardens, enclosed each with a high bamboo 
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