and a tuft of the lilac phlox. Such are the blossoms to be seen before most doors; and each is pretty in its own time and place; one has a long-standing regard for them all, including the homely sun-flower, which we should be sorry to miss from its old haunts. Then the scarlet flowering bean, so intimately connected with childish recollections of the hero Jack and his wonderful adventure, may still be seen flourishing in the cottage garden, and it would seem to have fallen from a pod of the identical plant celebrated in nursery rhyme, for it has a great inclination for climbing, which is generally encouraged by training it over a window. We do not hear, however, of any in these parts reaching the roof in a single night's growth. You must go to the new lands on the prairies for such marvels now-a-days. They tell a wonderful story of a cucumber-vine somewhere beyond the great lakes, in the last “new settlement,” probably; the seed having been sowed one evening in a good bit of soil, the farmer, going to his work next morning, found it not only out of the ground, but grown so much that he was curious to measure it; “he followed it to the end of his garden, over a fence, along an Indian trail, through an oak opening, and then seeing it stretch some distance beyond, he went back for his horse, but while he was saddling old Bald the vine had so much the advantage of him that it reached the next clearing before he did; there he left it to go back to dinner; and how much farther it ran that day Ebenezer could not tell for certain.”
We have no such wonders hereabouts; and even the ambitious bean seldom reaches higher than a low roof; nor is its growth always sufficiently luxuriant to shade the window, for it often shares that task with a morning-glory. The plan of these leafy
