In midsummer, when the fairies have pitched their tents about the sweet-scented bed, the blossoms will have become so many that if grandpa or grandma has a birthday, you can gather seventy or eighty (possibly ninety if you need so many) for a birthday gift. You will not see the fairies about the bed, for they come at midnight, but the dew-sprinkled tents are there, and the cluster of toadstools that the brownies like so well. Do not forget to give some flowers to the poor children who stand outside your gate, and who wish for some for their very own. The children who have no garden love to look at yours. Perhaps you have an older sister or brother who paints. If so, they may like some of your pansies to sketch, and to keep in the house in the winter when your real ones are tucked under the earth and snow. You will find several live things in your flower bed; the bees, the butterflies, and once in a while a humming-bird. Sir Bumble, the bee who looks so heavy and clumsy, touches lightly the pansies, and the pansies like to have him about, for he is so lively and cheery, so do not drive him away. The light yellow and the deep yellow butterflies seem like the pansies themselves, flying off from their stems for a journey about the country. Who knows what the butterflies and the bees tell the flowers, or what messages the flowers send by the flying creatures that pay them visits? When you have pansy beds of your own perhaps you will be able to write me some stories, and then perhaps you can tell me what the butterflies, bees and pansies talk about. Grace Marion Bryant. THE MULLEN. Most of the familiar or useful plants have had their origin or characteristics accounted for by myths or legends, whereby the ignorant and superstitious have attempted to explain such features as attracted their attention. Some of these ideas were creditable to the plant, while others were quite the contrary. The Mullen appears to have led a dual existence, seeking an alliance with the spiritual world and at the same time aiding and abetting the witches in their nefarious undertakings. A very pretty story concerning the Mullen is attributed to the American Indian, but in some regards it seems to be a variant of the Scandinavian Tree of Life myth. It appears that the Great Spirit of the red men lived at the top of a high tree whose branches reached to the heavens; as no mortal could attain to this high attitude, a spirit of the woods, in the guise of a beautiful maiden, took pity upon the people and so fashioning a ladder from the stems of the wild grape vine, she fastened it to a star. In order that the Great Father might not be disturbed, the fair sylvan carpeted the steps of the ladder with the velvet leaves of the Mullen, upon which she noiselessly ascended and descended, bearing the petitions of the red men or bringing to them advice or admonitions.