When Hanna de Long, freshly train-washed of train dust, walked down Third Street away from the station, old man Rentzenauer, for forty-odd springs coaxing over the same garden, was spraying a hose over a side-yard of petunias, shirt-sleeved, his waistcoat hanging open, and in the purpling light his old head merging back against a story-and-a-half house the color of gray weather and half a century of service.

In front of her house are two long, boarded beds of old-fashioned flowers, mignonette and petunias chiefly, and over the small, very white door with its shiny knob, creeps a white clematis vine.

But I knew it already; I needed no witness but her beds of petunias.

Mrs. Pike was too splendid for words, in petunia satin, and sable, and quantities of pearl chains; and Tom was trying to talk to her.

These were flower seeds,bags labeled "Petunia," "Candytuft," "Double Balsam," "Portulaca.

THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY VIEWING A PETUNIA.

By Amelia To Amelia Moonlight Musings Thoughts on a Petunia To a White Hollyhock Lines on the Miniature of a pair of twin boys The Cultivation of Flowers Music of the Mind APPENDIX.

When the garden-spot is marked out, dug, sown, planted, not forgetting the kitchen vegetables, and especially the coca and petunia-nicotiana, Selkirk, with his arms folded on his spade, thanks God with all his heart,God who has given him strength to finish his work.

By the middle of April they had planted a variety of seeds and were watching the growth or awaiting the germination of gay cosmos, shy four o'clocks, brilliant marigolds, varied petunias and stocks, smoke-blue ageratums, old-fashioned pinks and sweet williams.

"The petunia sows itself, too," Margaret contributed to the general stock of knowledge.

"You can get pretty, pale, pink petunias now, and they blossom at a great rate all summer.

"It was rather late so I planted seeds that would hurry up; sweet alyssum for a border, of course, and white verbenas and balsam, and petunias, and candytuft and, phlox and stocks and portulaca and poppies.

Giant petunias.

HOGAN, INEZ. Nicodemus and Petunia.

Joan Ward (C); 5Jan73; R542515. GOGARTY, OLIVER D. Mr. Petunia.

R676814. Petunia.

Giant petunias.

HOGAN, INEZ. Nicodemus and Petunia.

Joan Ward (C); 5Jan73; R542515. GOGARTY, OLIVER D. Mr. Petunia.

R676814. Petunia.

Height, 5 ft. Petunias.

She put some petunias on the mantel-piece and some grasses over the looking-glass, and then tried to read, but the book was not interesting.

Even in its wretched modern reproductions, she had preserved the contours of the gold and silver ornaments, the charm of chalices curving like petunias, and the charm of pyxes with their chaste sides; even in aluminum and imitation enamels and colored glasses, she had preserved the grace of vanished modes.