There were many parties for us, especially in the spring, when city folks like to go into the country.
The hawthorns, pink and white, were first to blossom, closely followed by the scarlet pyrus japonica, the snowballs, yellow laburnums—sweet as honey—acacias, lilacs, syringa, and spiraea. The beds were filled with old-fashioned flowers,—roses, mignonette, peonies, verbenas, love-lies-bleeding, mourning bride, and lilies, lilies, lilies, from the early lily-of-the-valley to the latest hardy variety. What strawberries grew here! Papa quoted with the opening of each season the bishop’s saying:
“Doubtless God might have made a better berry; doubtless He never did!”
What cherries he raised for us, black hearts and white hearts. What peaches, apricots, plums, apples, pears,—especially pears; Green Peace pears were famous. The fruit room at the top of the house was a pleasant place in the autumn when the pears were gathered, sorted, and placed on narrow shelves to ripen. Has my memory kept their sequence aright? Bartlett, Seckel, Beurré Bosc, Duchesse d’Angoulême, Louise bonne—prized for its single scarlet cheek—Winter Nelis—they lasted into spring—and the Vicar of Wakefield; I could not like the Vicar, he was so ugly!
Mrs. George Sage, a friend of these days, lately said to me:
“Your father gave me the most delicious pear I ever tasted, in the Green Peace garden. Do you remember the Chinese junk?”
Do I remember!
Listen to the song of the junk, as its great hulk swings faster and faster, back and forth, back and forth, while the passengers, twoscore tatterdemalions, sing riotously:
“Here we go up, up, up; now we go down, down, downey!”
The junk creaks and grumbles a minor accompaniment, accentuated by Friskey’s staccato “Bow, wow, wow!”