A flower of mystery, of wonderment to children, was the Evening Primrose; I knew the garden variety only with intimacy. Possibly the wild flower had similar charms and was equally weird in the gloaming, but it grew by country roadsides, and I was never outside our garden limits after nightfall, so I know not its evening habits. We had in our garden a variety known as the California Evening Primrose--a giant flower as tall as our heads. My mother saw its pale yellow stars shining in the early evening in a cottage garden on Cape Ann, and was there given, out of the darkness, by a fellow flower lover, the seeds which have afforded to us every year since so much sentiment and pleasure. The most exquisite description of the Evening Primrose is given by Margaret Deland in her _Old Garden_:-- "There the primrose stands, that as the night Begins to gather, and the dews to fall, Flings wide to circling moths her twisted buds, That shine like yellow moons with pale cold glow, And all the air her heavy fragrance floods, And gives largess to any winds that blow. Here in warm darkness of a night in June, ... children came To watch the primrose blow. Silently they stood Hand clasped in hand, in breathless hush around, And saw her slyly doff her soft green hood And blossom--with a silken burst of sound." [Illustration: The Title-page of Parkinson's _Paradisi in Solis_, etc.] The wild Primrose opens slowly, hesitatingly, it trembles open, but the garden Primrose flares open. The Evening Primrose is usually classed with sweet-scented flowers, but that exact observer, E. V. B., tells of its "repulsive smell. At night if the stem be shaken, or if the flower-cup trembles at the touch of a moth as it alights, out pours the dreadful odor." I do not know that any other garden flower opens with a distinct sound. Owen Meredith's poem, _The Aloe_, tells that the Aloe opened with such a loud explosive report that the rooks shrieked and folks ran out of the house to learn whence came the sound. The tall columns of the Yucca or Adam's Needle stood like shafts of marble against the hedge trees of the Indian Hill garden. Their beautiful blooms are a miniature of those of the great Century Plant. In the daytime the Yucca's blossoms hang in scentless, greenish white bells, but at night these bells lift up their heads and expand with great stars of light and odor--a glorious plant. Around their spire of luminous bells circle pale night moths, lured by the rich fragrance. Even by moonlight we can see the little white detached fibres at the edge of the leaves, which we are told the Mexican women used as thread to sew with. And we children used to pull off the strong fibres and put them in a needle and sew with them too.