148 THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
ambrosial breath; and how could I have forgotten, even 
for a moment, the heavenly odour of the quince ? 
There are times when I am moved to consider no 
flower so lovely and so temperate as the chrysanthemum. 
Its infinite variety of form, and size, and colour; its 
wonderful longevity as a cut blossom, which yet is 
marred by no stiff, immortelle-like lifelessness; its fresh, 
cool perfume like the scent of freshly turned furrows or 
breath of autumn woods, these are perhaps its chiefest 
charms, although one has this also to remember—that 
the chrysanthemum is as an oasis upon the sterile steppes 
of winter. It is, so to speak, apart from its proper ex¬ 
cellences, the friend in need who brings a most oppor¬ 
tune and harmonious element of movement and loveliness 
into a season of sterility and decay. Faith and Hope are 
sealed up implicit in brown border and bed; but this 
flower that blossoms like the rose within the very pre¬ 
cincts of the sepulchre, beneath Puritan skies that belie 
all thoughts of mirth and radiance, is surely the embodi¬ 
ment itself of Charity. It carries with it, too, so sweet 
a materialisation of the hour’s best sentiments; the lan¬ 
guorous exotic would but touch the spring of inoppor¬ 
tune reminiscence or untimely prescience; but this 
flower with its robust delicacy, its savour of the clean 
bare earth, brings with it a sense of fitness and happy 
cheer for which the twelve months’ quiet labour, ohne 
Hast und ohne Rast , seems not too high a price to pay. 
The chrysanthemum-lover’s year begins and ends in 
December, the harvest of the last late blooms and the 
task of striking the new cuttings being practically coeval; 
and thence onwards each successive month will bring its 
