The striped grass is still growing in one corner of my garden--the very same roots that were there in my childhood, and up to a year or so ago, the old lilac bush that Uncle Ed. Larcom picked blossoms from when he was a small boy, was there too. Aunt Betsey's garden was a beautiful combination of use and loveliness. All along the stone wall grew red-blossomed barm and in the long beds were hyssop (she called it _isop_) and rue and marigolds and catnip and camomile and sage and sweet marjoram and martinoes. Martinoes were funny things with a beautiful, ill-smelling bloom which looked like an orchid, and when the blossoms dropped there succeeded an odd shaped fruit, with spines and a long tail, which was used for pickles. Then there were king cups, a glorified buttercup, and a lovely little blue flower called "Star of Bethlehem" and four o'clocks. Right here I want to say that Frank Gaudreau has more varieties of four o'clocks than I ever supposed were known to lovers of flowers and I think he deserves the thanks of the village for his pretty garden. All the different herbs were carefully gathered by Aunt Betsey, and tied in bundles, and hung up to the rafters of the old attic. Sometimes I fancy I can smell them now on a damp day, and I like to recall the dear old lady in her tyer and cap, busy with her simples. I like to think of her as my tutelar divinity for I came to love her dearly, though I am sure that when I was first landed in her house, I was a big trial. Elsie Doane remembered another garden of that time, where, she says, they never picked a flower. I remember it too, but I had forgotten that they didn't pick the flowers. It flourished right where the engine house and those other buildings stand, and Elsie _thinks_ the garden reached way out to the sign post. Uncle Asa Ober owned that garden--the ancestor of Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Hooper and Helen Campbell, and many others of our fast fading away villagers. His two stepdaughters were cousins to my mother, and they had a little shop in an ell that ran from the house to the street, where they did dressmaking and millinery. Right in front of the shop was the garden all fenced in, but I had the right of way for I could sing! And whenever I learned a new _music_ from Joe Low's Singing School, I used to be called in to act as prima donna to the two ladies. There were cucumbers in the garden extension and artichokes by the old walls.