The flower lore of American children is nearly all of English derivation; but children invent as well as copy. In the South the lavish growth of the Magnolia affords multiform playthings. The beautiful broad white petals give a snowy surface for the inditing of messages or valentines, which are written with a pin, when the letters turn dark brown. The stamens of the flower--waxlike with red tips--make mock illuminating matches. The leaves shape into wonderful drinking cups, and the scarlet seeds give a glowing necklace. [Illustration: A Thought of Winter's Snows.] The glories of a spring garden are not in the rows of flowering bulbs, beautiful as they are; but in the flowering shrubs and trees. The old garden had few shrubs, but it had unsurpassed beauty in its rows of fruit trees which in their blossoming give the spring garden, as here shown, that lovely whiteness which seems a blending of the seasons--a thought of winter's snows. The perfection of Apple blossoms I have told in another chapter. Earlier to appear was the pure white, rather chilly, blooms of the Plum tree, to the Japanese "the eldest brother of an hundred flowers." They are faintly sweet-scented with the delicacy found in many spring blossoms. A good example of the short verses of the Japanese poets tells of the Plum blossom and its perfume. "In springtime, on a cloudless night, When moonbeams throw their silver pall O'er wooded landscapes, veiling all In one soft cloud of misty white, 'Twere vain almost to hope to trace The Plum trees in their lovely bloom Of argent; 'tis their sweet perfume Alone which leads me to their place." The lovely family of double white Plum blossoms which now graces our gardens is varied by tinted ones; there are sixty in all which the nineteenth century owes to Japan. The Peach tree has a flower which has given name to one of the loveliest colors in the world. The Peach has varieties with wonderful double flowers of glorious color. Cherry trees bear a more cheerful white flower than Plum trees. "The Cherry boughs above us spread The whitest shade was ever seen; And flicker, flicker came and fled Sun-spots between." I do not recall the Judas tree in my childhood. I am told there were many in Worcester; but there were none in our garden, nor in our neighborhood, and that was my world. Orchids might have hung from the trees a mile from my home, and would have been no nearer me than the tropics. I had a small world, but it was large enough, since it was bounded by garden walls.