THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
223 
these plants conjures up ; the housewife in the quaint 
cotton sun-bonnet worn in summer for the glare of the 
sun, in winter as protection from the draughts of air ; 
her clogs raising her feet above the planked walks, the 
loose jacket and the bunch of household keys suspended 
from her girdle; the tea-party when all the country¬ 
side would turn out to drink the cheering beverage 
amid the fragrance of the opening blossoms ; the gay 
evenings when the parterres were lighted by the re¬ 
flections from brilliant windows, when lovers wooed 
each other beneath the shadow’s of the trees, and chil¬ 
dren played among the hedges. They remind us of all 
those romantic scenes when Pepys and the beauties of 
Charles the Second’s court walked through his gardens 
at Hackney, laughing and chatting and plucking Eoses 
to throw at each other, of Pope and Lady Mary Monta¬ 
gue, and of the thousand and. one things celebrated in 
the old romances and the nursery rhymes. 
Those were the days when coy maidens could pluck 
a nosegay from their garden beds and give it to their 
lovers, confessing in that mystic language the secret 
which modesty forbade their lips to utter. Each flower 
had then a sentiment, and every youth and maiden 
knew it, but who cares for the language of flowers now ? 
Who cares that: 
“ Hope smiles amid blossoms white 
That crown the Hawthorn bough, 
And in the Myrtle’s leaflets bright, 
Love softly breathes his vow. 
The little Lily-of-the-Vale 
Seems sent our hearts to bless. 
Still whispering, on spring’s balmy gale, 
Return of happiness. 
While blooming on some favored spot. 
We trust to thee, Forget-me-not.” 
There is a peculiar charm to all of those old-fashioned 
flowers that grew in our grandmothers’ gardens. Lon- 
don-Pride, Bachelor’s-Button, and the sweet bells of the 
Columbine, affect one as the more showy modern ones 
do not, for they remind one of their lost youth. Each 
one has associations that stir the memory and set the 
heart a beating. Those pink bunches of Sweet-William 
recall the sunny summer morning in the long ago, when 
you gathered a handful to place in her hands—the pretty, 
rosy-cheeked girl play-fellow who roused your first love 
dream. Does not the scent of that Lilac bloom, like an 
enchanter’s wand, summon up visions of the old red 
school-house, the long rows of your schoolmates, and 
the desk where the teacher sat in state. And those 
beds of Lavender and Bosemary! 
Do you not see once more the old-fashioned kitchen 
in the ancient farmhouse, and the capacious chests of 
drawers, and the wide, double-doored presses in which 
the linen and other treasures of the family were stowed 
away, heaped up in snowy piles with Lavender and 
Rosemary between? 
Rousseau tells us in one of his works that as he and 
Madame de Warens were proceeding to Charmettes, she 
was struck by the appearance of some blue flowers in 
the hedge, and exclaimed, “ Here is the Periwinkle 
still in flower.” He then says, that thirty years after¬ 
wards, when accompanying IV . Plyron, as they climbed 
a hill, he observed some in blossom among the bushes, 
which bore his memory back at once to the time when 
he was walking with Madame deWarens,and he inadvert¬ 
ently cried: “Ah! there is the Periwinkle.” Dearer to 
us are the old flowers which have a memory than the 
newer, more gaudy favorites, mere parvenus that they 
are, which now reign in our gardens. 
Many of these humble flowers of our grandmothers’ 
day, though outlawed from our gardens, live in the 
poet's pages immortalized by genius. Whoever sees the 
Valerian without thinking of Chaucer’s quaint lines: 
“ The springen herbes grete arid smale, 
The Licoris and the Setewale!” 
This plant, which propagates itself with equal facility 
in the rich borders of the parterre, or in the dry crevices 
of old walls, was formerly called Setewale. One in¬ 
variably recalls Williams’ rhyme: 
“ With shepherds on the Thyming downs, 
I love tof>ass the summer’s day,” 
when he passes a bed of Thyme, with its purple flowers. 
Scott sings : 
“ Before my door the box-edged border lies, 
Where flowers of Mint, and Thyme and Tansy rise;” 
and [Shakespeare brings before us a whole array of 
charming memories in his “Winter’s Tale,” where he 
makes Perdita say to Polixenes : 
“ Here’s flowers for you; 
Hot Lavender, Mint, Savory, Marjoram; 
The Marigold that goes to bed with the sun, 
And with him rises weeping.” 
And again: 
--“ bold Oxlips and 
The Crown Imperial; Lilies of all kinds; , 
The Flower-de-luce being one.” 
It is pleasant to know that a few of these old-fashioned 
plants are being brought into notice again by the rage 
for them as “aesthetic emblems,” but in most well-reg¬ 
ulated gardens many of the most beautiful are missed. 
A New York lady wandering in my garden a year or 
two ago caught sight of my pot Marigolds and blue and 
white Lupines. “ Why, how strange! I haven’t seen any 
since I was a child. It does my eyes good. And Bee- 
Larkspur too,” as she looked still farther, and ‘ ‘ Morning. 
Glories ! Will wonders never cease ? You must send 
me some seeds next year.” 
This I promised to do, and I suppose if I should visit 
her garden this summer I should find my old friends 
blooming by the side of rarer favorites. All the plants 
mentioned need only the simplest culture, and will well 
repay by an abundance of bloom the little attention 
that is given them. I hope that this plea will not fall 
on heedless ears, but that others will call back the long 
neglected flowers that bloomed in our grandmothers’ 
gardens. Fred. Myron Colby. 
By going a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping 
to speak with a friend on the corner, by meeting this 
man or that, or by turning down this street instead of 
the other, we may let slip some impending evil, by 
which the whole current of our lives would have 
been changed. There is no possible solution to the 
dark enigma, but the one word, “ Providence.”— 
Longfellow. 
