See those old men and women "pottering" about the bit of ground before the almshouses; they also feel the cheering influence of spring. Although each plot or bed would but little more than make a grave, were a tolerable breadth of walk left between, they find a pleasure in cultivating so small a patch of earth, every inch of which brings something to remembrance as it is turned over: that root was given by old William, who is dead; the other by John, who is dying; from this, last summer, were cut the flowers he placed in a comrade's coffin; that his wife, long dead, brought all the way from the country, when she went to see her daughter at Croydon, and was so poor, that she had to walk back--and that walk caused her death; for, while heated, she sat before the door in the cool, calm April evening--it "chilled" her, and she died. Honest old bedesman! I could kiss off the tear that fell on the blue sleeve of thy old coat, were it not for pride or shame. "Two years ago, sir; she was but seventy!" and thy heart still softens, and thy tears fall when her image rises before thee, for in thy eyes she never looked aged, but rose green and fresh through the memory of other years, even as when thou first didst woo her, walking between the quiet woods along the canal near Croydon, when the forget-me-not looked into the water at its shadow, and the crimson foxglove made a red streak like sunset in the crystal mirror, and no one then dreamed that a railway would bare its iron back where the silver water reflected both your images and the broad-branched oak, beneath which ye were then seated.