this world, I could 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
you, child, but to me he's jest as real as if he hadn't been dead
these many years, and I can laugh over the things he used to do the
same as if they happened yesterday."

Only a name! And I had read it on a lichen-covered stone in the old
burying-ground; but as I walked home through the twilight 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 Uncle Jim Matthews' voice of
cheerful discord had mingled with the spring song of the frogs
sounding from every marsh and pond.

It was Aunt Jane's motto that wherever a weed would grow a flower
would grow; and carrying out this principle of planting, her garden
was continually extending its boundaries; and denizens of the garden
proper were to be found in every nook and corner of her domain. In the
spring you looked for grass only; and lo! starting up at your feet,
like the unexpected joys of life, came the golden daffodil, the paler
narcissus, the purple iris, and the red and yellow tulip, flourishing
as bravely as in the soil of its native Holland; and for a few sunny
weeks the front yard would 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 and caste between man
and his brother man. In the middle of the garden stood a
"summer-house," or arbor, whose crumbling timbers were knit together
by interlacing branches of honeysuckle and running roses. The
summer-house had four entrances, opening on four paths that divided
the ground into quarter-sections occupied by vegetables and small
fruits, and around these, like costly embroidery on the hem of a
homespun garment, ran a wide border of flowers that blossomed from
early April to late November, shifting from one beauty to another as
each flower had its little day.