Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/50

Rh a broad humour bordering on coarseness. She has a pale gray, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow: a wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us, while the year is yet free and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and her manner a naturalness, frankness, and affectionateness that we have been so long familiar with in their other modes of manifestation, that it would have been indeed a disappointment not to have found them.

She led us directly through her house into her garden, a perfect bouquet of flowers. "I must show you my geraniums while it is light," she said, "for I love them next to my father," And they were indeed treated like petted children, guarded by a very ingenious contrivance from the rough visitation of the elements. They are all, I believe, seedlings. She raises two crops in a year, and may well pride herself on the variety and beauty of her collection. Geraniums are her favourites; but she does not love others less that she loves these more. The garden is filled, matted with flowering shrubs and vines; the trees are wreathed with honeysuckles and roses; and the girls have brought away the most splendid specimens of heart's-ease to press in their journals. Oh, that I could give some of my countrywomen a vision of this little paradise of flowers, that they might learn how taste and industry, and an earnest love and study of the art of garden-culture, might triumph over small space and small