THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
872 
■where late glowed gorgeous annuals and white-lipped 
Lilies. 
Our sitting-room's mantle, flower-stand and brackets 
looked bare enough this morning, when their vases had 
been emptied of the last flowers of summer, washed 
and put back in their places with not so much as a 
shriveled Zinnia-head or an Aster-blossom, with its 
colors well dried in, or a green or a crumpled leaf in the 
sunny room that, since the Liverworts and Crocuses of 
April budded, had not been destitute of sweet, bright 
flowers. 
The summers work proved a strong current that re¬ 
lentlessly rushed me past any hours for gathering and 
pressing Ferns, autumn leaves, Pigeon and Maiden¬ 
hair vines, or even the long prickly stems of running 
Evergreen with which our woods abound, and when 
looped over pictures and windows are very good sub¬ 
stitutes for living plants. 
And, now, the snow is fast covering the frozen earth, 
and I cannot loot to it for any green thing with which 
to decorate my rooms. 
John said, "Put away your vases and flower trum¬ 
pery till spring,” a suggestion I had no idea of follow¬ 
ing, for was there not an old box-churn in the attic with 
its wide mouth crammed with the stems of dried, wild 
grasses, which the children and harvesters had gathered 
for me when the hay was being cut ? 
Rich, brown, water-weeds, with curious beads and 
tiny burrs swinging from their tips : long furry sprays 
of grass, Maltese and bluish grey, soft and fuzzy, like 
the backs of little kittens : black fronds, of course: 
marsh brakes; Rattlesnake grass in shades of green, 
their shell-like seeds rattling against the chum in every 
breeze that crossed the garret, and airy, almost invisible 
sprays of bleached June grass gathered from sun- 
parched pastures, that, when arranged in baskets of 
green things, form almost a halo of glory over them, 
their color, a tinge of gold, adding to the delusion. 
In a firkin across the narrow stairway, with their 
stems wound loosely together and swinging inside the 
stairs, supported by the bushy mass of foliage that 
heads the firkin, is a very large handful of Wild Oats, 
dark green sprays, that will hold their color till spring, 
and that, drooping from baskets and vases, are almost as 
beautiful and fresh looking as though just cut from the 
fields. 
Swinging from the warping-bars that grandmother’s 
dear old hands tilted back against the garret’s eaves a 
quarter of a century ago, just before she put away 
shuttle and spindle forever, are brittle branches of 
black Alder, their twigs thickly studded with scarlet 
berries; and, hanging with their long brown heads 
rapping the floor, is a bundle of Cat-tails gathered from 
the swamp. These are useful, not only for vase and 
wall ornaments and copying in applique work, but 
when dried and saturated with oil, make bright, flaming 
torches that bum a long time with a steady blaze, so 
our boys say. 
Surely there is material enough here, dry and lifeless, 
but all beautiful, to fill my rooms with graceful, airy 
beauty through the winter months. 
Sometimes I think we do not half appreciate our 
native grasses, that grow by every roadside and along 
every water-course. Surrounded by the luxuriant 
growths and blossoms of mid-summer, they do not then 
claim notice; but gather them just before they flower, 
drying them with stems in natural positions, and when 
the frosts destroy all green vegetation bring them out 
from their hiding-places, and their fresh, lasting beauty 
will bring surprise and pleasure to yourself and friends. 
Two Augusts ago, I was returning from a neighbor’s, 
and noticed by the road-side a waving blue-green 
grass that grew in bunches close to the feuce 
rails for a long distance. It was but a few mo¬ 
ments work to take scissors from my work-bag and cut 
an armful, winding a wild Hop-vino about their stems 
to keep them in place. 
After reaching home I carried the green bundle into a 
spare chamber, and dropped the stems into a splint- 
basket that swung before a window. 
Having no occasion to enter the room for two weeks, 
I entirely forgot the grass, but, in that time, noticed 
the ungathered bunches by the roadside, as it flowered, 
formed dull, brown sprays, that were hardly distin-' 
guishable among the rank weeds that, grew by the 
fence, and thought. " This species of grass is not a bit 
pretty when dry.” 
An errand calling me to that chamber, I hurriedly 
fluug back its door, and I might well have thought I 
had burst into fairy-land. 
I would that all who love beautiful things iu Nature 
could have seeu. with me, that window that faced the 
door. Against the white curtain the basket lmug. The 
morning sun was pouring its beams into the room, 
golden floods of sunlight that brought out in distinct 
relief the airy creation, that filled not only the basket 
but the window. 
In place of a stiff, green bundle I had placed there, 
was a feathery, snow-white mass. Every green sprig 
had blossomed into a snowy spray as fluffy as swan’s- 
down. as white as the lace curtain that was its back¬ 
ground. A delicate tracery of frost-work it seemed, 
not a common roadside grass that John calls “Blue- 
bunch-weeds,” another, “ Cat-liair grass,” and still 
another. “Swan’s-tails.” 
I filled my hanging brackets and baskets with it en¬ 
tirely last winter, and every friend who came iu would 
exclaim, “Where did you obtain such beautiful foreign 
grass ?’ None recognized it, and it kept its purity and 
beauty, a joy to all who saw it. 
Last August I gathered more, and would like much 
to know its botanical name and correct common name,* 
as well as those of our other beautiful wild grasses. 
I often ask our hay harvesters, when they are mow¬ 
ing, what name they give this and that grass or weed, 
and they nearly all have a different name for the same 
growth. Gray’s little botany gives me no information, 
and I find I am too rusty in this study to analyze them 
by any other work. 
It seems a pity for the graceful, beautiful sprays that 
droop by our brook-sides, and bleach unnoticed in our 
pastures, to be dubbed by the coarse, suggestive names 
our farmers and harvesters give them. 
Clarissa Potter. 
* The botanical name of the “Cotton-Grass” which our 
contributor so much admires, is Eriphorum polystach- 
yon. Though not a grass, as it belongs to the sedge 
family, it is commonly known as such, and its fuzzy 
appearance is caused by the wool-like cottony covering 
to the seeds. 
