The richest autumnal glory came from the cheerful marigold, the "golde" of Chaucer, and "mary-bud" of Shakespeare. This flower, beloved of all the old writers, as deeply suggestive and emblematic, has been coldly neglected by modern poets, as for a while it was banished from modern town gardens; but it may regain its popularity in verse as it has in cultivation. In farm gardens it has always flourished, and every autumn has "gone to bed with the sun and with him risen weeping," and has given forth in the autumn air its acrid odor, which to me is not disagreeable, though my old herbal calls its "a very naughty smell." A favorite shrub in our garden, as in every country dooryard, was southernwood, or lad's-love. A sprig of it was carried to meeting each summer Sunday by many old ladies, and with its finely dissected, bluish-green foliage, and clean pungent scent, it was pleasant to see in the meeting-house, and pleasant to sniff at. The "virtues of flowers" took a prominent place in the descriptions in old-time botanies. The southernwood had strong medicinal qualities, and was used to cure "vanityes of the head." "Take a quantitye of Suthernwood and put it upon kindled coales to burn and being made into powder mix it with the oyle of radishes and anoynt a balde place and you shall see great experiences." It was of power as a love charm. If you placed a sprig in each shoe and wore it through the day when you were in love, you would then also in some way "see great experiences." In the tender glamour of happy association, all flowers in the old garden seem to have been loved save the garish petunias, whose sickish odor grew more offensive and more powerful at nightfall and made me long to tear them away from their dainty garden-fellows, and the portulaca with its fleshy, worm-like stems and leaves, and its aggressively pushing habits, "never would be missed." Perhaps its close relation to the "pusley," most hated of weeds, makes us eye it askance.