Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/72

54 to the wild. First, however, I rest for a few minutes under a wide-branching oak opposite the site of a vanished house. You would know there had been a house here at some time, even if you did not see the cellar-hole, by the old maid's pinks along the fence. How fresh they look! And how becomingly they blush! They are worthy of their name. Age cannot wither them. Less handsome than carnations, if you will, but faithful, home-loving souls; not requiring to be waited upon, but given rather to waiting upon others. Like mayweed and catnip, they are what I have heard called "folksy plants;" though on second thought I should rather say "homey." There is something of the cat about them; a kind of local constancy; they stay by the old place, let the people go where they will. Probably they would grow in front of a new house,—even a Queen Anne cottage, so called,—if necessity were laid upon them, but who could imagine it? It would be shameful to subject them to such indignity. They are survivals, livers in the past, lovers of things as they were, charter members, I should say, of the Society of Colonial Dames.