Aunt Jane of Kentucky

as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great div

ere happy Adams and Eves walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers, with green leaves and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet; while those

ossessed gardens, but whose gardens possessed them, and it is the spots sown and tended by

ere were sunshine and a gentle wind, and white clouds in a blue sky. We stopped at a gate. My father opened it, and I walked up a grassy path to the ruins of a house. The chimney was still standing, but all the rest was a heap of blackened, half-burned rubbish which spring and summer were covering with wild vines and weeds, and around the ruins of the house lay the ruins of the garden. The honeysuckle, bereft of its trellis, wandered helplessly over the ground

wanted a garden so much, we called it by that name; and here and there a little of Mother Earth's bosom, left uncovered, gave us some war

ckle without perfume is a base pretender, to be cast out of the family of the real sweet-scented honeysuckle. There were two roses of similar quality, one that detestable mockery known as the burr-rose. I have for this flower the feeling of repulsion that one has for certain disagreeable human beings,-people with cold, clammy hands, for instance. I hated its feeble pink color, its rough calyx, and its odor always made me think of

beautiful, but color and form are only the body of the rose; the soul, the real self, is the rose odor, and no rose-soul was incarnated in its petals. Again and again, deceived by its beauty, I would hold it close to my face to breathe its fragrance, and always its faint sickening-sweet odor brought me only disappointment and disgust. It was a Lamia among roses. Another peculiarity was that

nothing here to satisfy my longing, and I turned hungrily to other gardens whose gates were open to me in those early days. In one of these was a vast bed of purple heartsease, flower of the beautiful name. Year after year they had blossomed and gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck th

d to stay his steps for one ecstatic moment to look and to breathe, to forget and to remember. The shadow of the owner's house lay on this garden at the morning hour, and a tall brick building intercepted its share of the afternoon sunshine; but the love and care of the wrinkled old woman who tended it took the place of real sunshine, and everything planted here grew with a luxuriance not seen in sunnier and more favored spots. The mistress of the garden, when questioned as t

ght be looked at, but not pulled. How different from those wild gardens of the neighboring woods where we children roamed at will, shouting rapturously over the

ad it, I and my children. Together we played under the bee-haunted lindens, and looked at the sunset through the scarlet and yellow leaves of the sugar maples, and I l

he tread of patriot and tory, who gathered here to drink a health to General Washington or to King George; and patriot, and tory, too, had trod the paths of the garden and plucked its flowers and its fruit in the times that tried men's souls. By the back gate grew a strawberry apple tree, and every morning the dewy grass held a night's windfall of the tiny red apples that were the reward of the child who rose earliest. A wonderful grafted tree that bore two kinds of fruit gave the place a touch of fairyland's magic, and no explanation of the process of grafting ever diminished the awe I felt when I stood under this tree and saw ripe spice apples growing on one limb and green winter pearmains on all the others. The pound sweeting, the spitzenberg, and many sister apples were there; and I stayed long enough to see

Fuchsias and dark-red clove pinks grew in a peculiarly rich and sunny spot by the back fence, and over a pot of the musk-plant I used to hang as Isabella hung over her pot of basil. I had never seen it before, and have never

ut when Memory goes a-gleaning, she dwells longest on th

he day,' and that's the best time for seein' flowers,-the cool of the mornin' and the cool of the evenin'. There's jest as much difference between a flower with the dew on it at sun-up and a flower in the middle o' the day as there is between

lowly that we have not time to watch its every stage. There is no precise moment when the rose leaves become a bud, or when the bud turns to a full-blown flower. But at dawn by a bed of poppies you may watch the birth of a flower

en the sun's goin' down, and you'll see the white ones lookin' like stars, and the yeller ones shinin' like big gold lamps in the dusk; and when the last light o' the sun strikes the red ones, they look like cups o' wine, and some of 'em turn to colors that there ain't

of Aunt Jane's planting I found that flowers were also memories; that reminiscences were folded in the petals of roses and lilies; that a rose's perfume might be a voice from a vanished summer; and even th

Amos and the time he saw snakes. It wasn't often we got a joke on Sa

it was this: Sam was raisin' an embankment 'round one of his ponds, and Uncle Jim Matthews and Amos Crawford was helpin' him. It was one Monday mornin', about the first of April, and the weather was warm and sunny, jest the kind to bring out snakes. I reckon there never was anybody hated a snake as much as Sam did. He'd been skeered by one when he was a child, and never got over it. He used to say there was jest two things he was afraid of: Milly and a snake. That mornin' Uncle Jim and Amos got to the pond before Sam did, and Uncl

d looked. Amos says, says he: 'The man's gone crazy all at once.' Uncle Jim says: '

away!' and all the time he was throwin' out his left foot in every direction. Finally Uncle Jim grabbed hold of his foot and there was a red and

like a woman, and it was five minutes or more before they could stop him. Uncle Jim brought water and put on his hea

n'. When I put my foot in my pants this mornin' I must 'a' carried the necktie inside, and by th

ncle Jim says: 'No wonder, Sam; you jumped about six fee

t? I know I jumped six

, I'm too sorry for you to laugh at you like Uncle Jim, but I must say this wouldn

d says he: 'Things has come to a fine pass in Kentucky when a sober, God-fearin'

uld keep on laughin' till I died jest over things I ricollect. The trouble is there ain't always anybody around to laugh with me. Sam Amos ain't nothin' but a name to y

ht I would hardly have been startled if Sam Amos, in the pride of life, had come riding past me on his bay mare, or if Uncl

be a great flower garden. Then blossom and leaf would fade, and you might walk all summer over the velvet grass, never knowing how much beauty and fragrance lay hidden in the darkness of the earth. But when I go back to Aunt Jane's garden, I pass through the front yard and the back yard between rows of lilac, syringas, calycanthus, and honeysuckle; I open the rickety gate, and find myself in a genuine old-fashioned garden, the homely, inclusive spot that welcomed all growing things to its hospitable bounds, type of the days when there were no impassable barriers of gold

e of place or birth and acknowledge her kinship with common humanity. The Bourbon rose could not hold aside her skirts from contact with the cabbage-rose; the lavender could not disdain the companionship of sage and thyme. All must live together in the concord of a perfect democracy. Then if the great Garde

mmer-house grew one historic rose, heroine of an old romance, to which I listened one day as we

t to have a fine-soundin' name. But I never saw anybody yet that knew enough about roses to tell what its right name is. Maybe when I'm dead and gone

t's the way it was with grandfather and grandmother. I've heard mother say that grandmother cried for a week when she found she had to go, and every now and then she'd sob out, 'I wouldn't mind it so much if I could take my gyarden.' When they began packin' up their things, grandmother took up this rose and put it in an iron kittle and laid plenty of good rich earth around the roots. Grandfather said the load they had to carry was heavy enough without puttin' in any useless things. But grandmother says, says she: 'If you leave this rose behind, you can leave me, too.' So the kittle and the rose went. Four weeks they was on their way, and every time they

house wouldn't hold the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that come to the funeral. And here's her rose growin' and bloomin' yet, like there wasn't any

Milly Amos had a set o' spoons that'd been in her family for four generations and was too precious to use; and I've got my family rose, and it's jest as dear to me as china and silver are to other folks. I ricollect after father died and the estate had

can take what you want of the furniture, and if there's anything left, that can be my part. If there ain't

y says, 'Ain't that jest like Jan

and further than that, I'll

oil from the woods, and we put that in first and set the roots in it and packed 'em good and firm, first with woods' soil, then with clay, waterin' it all the time. When we got through, I says: 'Now, you prett

out, grandmother's rose come out, too. Not a leaf on it ever withered, and me and my children and my children's children have gethered flowers from it all these years. Folks say I'm foolish about it, and I reckon I am. I've outlived most o' the people I love, but I don't want to outlive this rose. We've both weathered many a hard w

pink, the true rose color, it spoke of queens' gardens and kings' palaces, and every satiny petal was a palimpsest of song and legend. Its perfume was the attar-of-rose scent, like that of the roses of India. It satisfied and satiated with its rich potency

nicled under one of these periods, just as we say of historical events that they happened in the reign of this or that queen or empress. But this garden had all seaso

time," and every gold cup held nepenthe for the nightmare dre

fydils don't wait for anything. Before the snow's gone you'll see their leaves pushin' up through the cold ground, and the buds come hurryin' along tryin' to keep up with the leaves, jest like they knew that little children and old women like me was waitin' and longin' for 'em. Why, I've seen these flowers bloomin' and the snow fallin' over 'em in March, and they didn't mind it a bit. I got my start o' daffydils from mother's gyarden, and every fall I'd divide the roots up and scatter 'em out till I got the whole place pretty well sprinkled wi

sunbonnet and went out where Abram was at work in the field, and says I, 'Abram, you've got to stop plowin' and put the horse to the spring wagon and take me over to the old Harris plac

out this. I hear they're plowin' up Old Lady Harris' gyarden and throwin' the

out laughin', and says he: 'Jane, who ever heard of a farmer stoppin' plowin' to go aft

efore pleasure, Abram. If it's goin' to rain to-morrow that's all the more reason why I

ughin' two or three times while he was hitchin' up and says he: 'Don't tell any o'

understands their feelin's. We loaded up the wagon with the pore things, and as soon as we got home, Abram took his hoe and made a little trench all aro

over yonder by the front fence,

d saw a long line of flowerless plants, standing li

that. Some folks said the place I had 'em in was too shady, and I put 'em right out there where the sun strikes on 'em till it sets, and still they won't bloom. It's my opinion, honey, that they're jest homesick. I believe if I was to take them daffydils back to Aunt Matilda's and plant 'em in the border where they used to grow,

rs I had it. A bud might come once in a while, but it would blast before it was half open. And at last I says to it, says I, 'What is it you want, honey? There's somethin' that don't please you, I know. Don't you like the place you're planted in, and the hollyhocks and lilies for neighbors?' And one day I took it up and set it between that white tea and another La France, and it went to bloomin' right away. It didn't like the neighborhood it was in, you see. And did you ever hear o' people disappearin' from their homes and never bein' found any more? Well

there's a rose I lost sixty years ago, and the ricollection o' that rose keeps me from bein' satisfied with all I've got. It grew in Old Lady Elro

l the color the rose was. I've got all the shades of yeller in my garden, but nothin' like the color o' that rose. It got deeper and deeper towards the middle, and lookin' at one of them roses half-opened was like lookin' down into a gold mine. The leaves crinkled and curled back towards the stem as fast as it opened, and

s and full-blown ones, fastened in the gyirdle, and that bunch o' yeller roses was song and sermon and prayer to me that day. I couldn't take my eyes off 'em; and I thought tha

r, and when I asked Old Lady Elrod about it she said, 'Mistress Parrish, I cannot tell y

her'll see its face and hear its voice above all the others, and that's the way with my lost flowers. No matter how many roses and chrysanthemums I have, I ke

r even a sigh. And I thought how the sting of life would lose its venom, if for every soul

maidens to the queen. Here and there over the warm earth old-fashioned pinks spread their prayer-rugs, on which a worshiper might kneel and offer thanks for life and

lly toward the evening skies, beyond whose stars a

n John looked into heaven he saw gold streets and gates of pearl, but he don't say anything about gyardens. I like what he says about no sorrer, nor cryin', nor pain, and God wipin' away all tears fr

th! No apocalyptic vision can come betw

n a new earth, girdled by four soft-flowing rivers, and watered by mists that arise in the night to fall on the face of the sleeping world, where all we plant shall grow

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es set in a background of the granit

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WHY. By E

e personality of a beautiful girl whose uncle ar

ONEYMOONS. By

. He is past thirty, without a wife, and so rich that he cannot get

NTUCKY. By Eliz

rt. Everyone is sure to love Aunt Jane and her neighbors, her qui

ER. By Josep

written recently. The episode where the Christian Science lady meets

ER. By Sid

he heroine, is one of the most lovable women in fiction-pure, worshipf

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ough to the end at a sitting, forgetful of time, troubles, or tired

By Robert W

ts of the year, and nothing more fascinating than "J

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nto her story their love for the region and their stubborn faith in what held them there. It is

ULT. By Kate L

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with real men and women, a strong plot and thrilling

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nd rather complicated plot. The girl is particularly unusual

e of the Old Frontier

who leaving an Eastern school joins her father at a m

., OR ONE

to the man she loved. She preferred to send him away rather than to lose hi

rs at the popular price of

ANY, 52 Duane S

T J

KEN

A CALVE

al personage has co

nd in the midst of her garden, where each "flower was a human thing with a life-story"-we seem to rene

iza Calvert Hall has caught at once the real charm, the real spi

THE SA

nd of

and spirit of the old time country folk-a book full of sentiment and kindliness and high ideals. It cannot fail to appeal to every reader by reason of its sunny humor, its sweet

BURT C

hers,