i 
APRIL. 
HAWTHORN ( Crateegus ). Hope. 
UR old poets, as if despairing 
to find a fitting name for this 
fragrant blossom, have called 
it May; for to them that word 
recalled the season of poetry, 
the month of flowers, and was 
fraught with associations of all 
that is bright and beautiful on the earth. The Troglo¬ 
dytes, who recalled the golden age by their simple man¬ 
ners, smilingly covered those whom death took fiom 
them with branches of hawthorn; for they regarded 
death as the dawn of a life in which they should part no 
more. In Athens, young maidens carried boughs of 
hawthorn at the weddings of their companions; the 
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