ndle Tree is in seed, which has
a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony,
which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single
white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large
seed-pod, which burst a short time ago, and revealed blue-black seeds
sheathed in coralline forms of the most absolute vermilion. You could
see them fifty yards away. It seems to have no purpose in life but
to pack the seeds--or perhaps, they are beacons for the birds. I took
pains to be beforehand with the birds, having no desire to see Greek
peonies in my neighbours' gardens. The seeds are safely bestowed,
though their fate has not been Jonah's. There's a spinney of
elder-trees in the combe of my hermitage, which, I am told, was
planted entirely by magpies. And I suppose it was wood-pigeons who
planted two ilex trees on the top of the Guinigi tower in Lucca; and
some bird or other, once more, which is answerable for a fine
fig-tree growing in the parapet of the bridge at Cordova, in no soil
whatsoever. It was loaded with fruit when I saw it. But fig-trees are
like poets; if you want them to sing you must torture their roots. The
parallel wobbles, but will be understood.

DORIAN MODES

Being known in these parts for a friendly soul, and trusted, moreover,
I have fallen into the position among the peasantry which the parson
used to hold, and does still when he takes the trouble to qualify for
it. If I can't always tell them what to do I may be able to put them
in the way of the man who can. One learns how to make a dictionary of
life as one gets on in it. Another use which they can have of me: I
can tell them how to put their requests or demands. They have no sense
whatever of a written language.

I must not betray confidences, or I could relate some curious matters
on this head. I know, for instance, a farmer who is worth a couple of
hundred thousand at the least, and who can neither write nor read.
He has learned somehow a cross between a scratch and a blot which is
accepted as a signature to cheques--but no more than that. And there
is no harm in saying that I often need an interpreter. I had a
case the other night when a man I know brought in a friend for
consultation--a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type,
rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the
world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches
could I understand.