pest, the thistle for example, furnish the winter birds. with many a meal. Even indolence has its virtues, and if it were not for the laziness of the husbandman many a chirper would go without its breakfast.

But our ride is finished and if we have not found "sermons in stones and good in everything" we have at least found pleasure and instruction from the common things in our way, and taken our thoughts, that so often settle down to brood over the sad things in life, out of ourselves into the light and sunshine of God's universe.

BACK YARDS AND GARDENS.

For how many years to the little child or weary invalid do the walls or fences of the small back yard or the little garden form the horizon line! How every object in these enclosures is stereotyped on the eye and idealized in the mind! How eagerly the seasons are waited for, especially Spring, if she but call up the one violet or columbine from the nook where a brother's hand has planted it, a token of what pleasures lay waiting for the little child when she, too, would be well enough to climb the hills and gather the flowers! How little we grown people understand the imaginative joys of little folk! I recall now a solitary recreation of a little invalid when allowed the range of the small back yard for the first time after illness—a recreation never told of till many, many years afterwards. To a casual

observer the sight was that of a child wandering around the place, picking up bits of wood, leaves, insects, etc. But there was a world of imagination there. In her sick hours she had read Robinson Crusoe; and now she was fancying herself that hero. This small yard was the island; she was Robinson. A shelter must be built, and the chips and sticks were collected for the structure. Then food must be provided for the winter season; for it seemed more natural for the child to think of the cold winter when the snow was over the top of the door than of a rainy one. So dead beetles, grasshoppers, worms, etc., were collected and carefully stored. Then Robinson's goats- there was a puzzle! but the large red or yellow caterpillars, called cows by her, furnished a substitute; they were taken tenderly and put in the enclosure, with great green leaves for fodder. What if the careless foot or stormy wind or dropping rain destroyed all this? The play was repeated day after day with equal enjoyment. Then the morning glories that climbed over the bedroom window, planted by a mother's hand, how they shed a glory and brightness into the poor room! How a mother's touch, plucking the poppies, turning their scarlet leaves backwards to form a petticoat, tying it around the waist with a bit of grass, leaving the round seed vessel exposed for a head, could transform a common flower into a pretty doll! Then were there ever such luscious peaches, plums or apples as those which grew in the garden our childhood knew? We trow not.

Then when winter comes, how for the little child or

weary invalid the spirit of the storm seems to exert itself to hang its beautiful snow flowers on the trees and bushes, its white etchings on the old fences and boards, its fantastic paintings on the window glass! What pleasure to plant seeds in the small garden plot, to watch the growth, to count our harvest even before ripening! Truly we may go farther and find no sweeter pleasures or more satisfying. A garden-how much the word. implies! With some a show place with everything in the nicest order, every flower in rank, the lawn shaven smooth as a convict's head; where we cannot help pitying the poor grass as it vainly strives to live and bring forth its seed; with the pines curtailed of their chief beauty, the outstretching lower limbs, or, worse still, cut off at half growth, as we saw some in a garden in Andover, and left looking like enormous beehives. Such a garden as this, instead of the feelings of beauty, enjoyment, admiration and oftentimes worship, as we gaze at the Master's unrivalled workmanship, brings to my mind (especially when gazing at the shaven lawns) the only thought of how much money and labor spent to distort Nature and deprive her of her charms. The beauty of the grass, even in a neglected field, in its different stages! How the wind will sweep through it, till it seems like the running waves! How the clover and buttercups adorn it-the yellow cups catching the sunshine, and the clover sending its subtle perfume through it, to invite the busy bee and wandering butterfly. Give one an old-fashioned garden, neglected, if you will, where Nature has not been quite thrust out.

We have such a one in our mind now. The place had been the residence of one to whom the sight of the hide was pleasing, as the representative of money; part of the garden was a foot deep with the odds and ends of leather; excavations almost like those of Pompeii were required to find the soil; but it was found after persistent effort. The land was in three slopes, large locust trees at the foot; grass covered it where the leather did not. Paths were made on the sides and named Locust and Raspberry avenues. Ferns were planted in the shade where nothing else would grow; old stumps and rocks were arranged to form a rockery; a rustic bower made at the foot of the lower hill and a grapevine and honeysuckle trained over it; in another corner a retreat called Boffin's Bower of Dickens memory was constructed of an old gate and numerous beanpoles, over which a woodbine crept and in the course of three years kindly concealed every deformity; a stump with a large hollow in it made a flower pot for a fern; an ancient bean pot found among rubbish was installed as a vase for another fern. This bean pot could have furnished the theme for a story. How often had it made its Saturday-night journeys to the bakery with its home-arranged contents; how often its Sunday morning travels homeward with the time-honored Sabbath dinner; and now, when rejected for its unsoundness, still undespised, put to an æsthetic use bearing the graceful fronds that should give pleasure to the eye in a weary hour. The woodbine hung its green festoons around the bower in

spring, or in autumn dropped its crimson leaves into the lap of the occupant. A bluebird entered, and raised a family in the birdhouse hung on an old locust tree; while the evening primrose, amid other flowers, seemed to shed a pale, lamplike color around with its strange odor. The sunsets cast a double beauty on the river, seen from the bower, or in spring and fall sent their white-capped waves dancing by, bringing old Ocean's murmur with them. But, ah! the wisdom of the city fathers, after allowing the clear stream to be polluted year after year, has filled it up and deprived the residents of what was once and still might be a source of health and beauty. These old-fashioned gardens, with their rambling walks guiltless of ribbon beds or carpet patterns, but glowing with clumps of brilliant hollyhocks and yellow sunflowers stretching their golden disks above the fences, as if, like the Persian, they worshipped the Day God whom they followed! It needed some one to cross the Atlantic to bring this despised flower into fashionable notice, and to give us lessons on art and taste, even if it were hard to separate the few golden grains from the unintelligible and the nonsensical. We venerate and esteem all that is worthy of it in the old country, and we would fain imitate all that is worthy of imitation. But we do not yield the palm of superiority in art or anything else to John Bull, nor do we feel ready to worship a golden calf. Some have a dislike to single flowers. I have heard a lady say, "I would not have a single hollyhock in my garden." To my taste, single flowers