A pungent spray of rose-geranium — A breath of the old life.
It brings up the little five-room cottage where I was born, And where I grew through a smiling childhood.
The white-bearded grandfather sits in his mended rocking-chair, His eyes far off, crooning "The Sweet By and By," Marked with the tapping of his toe upon the weathered porch-floor, While the sunshine drizzles through the great oaks.
And there is my grandmother's kneeling figure, Turning over the rich black earth with her trowel; And the kind wrinkles on her face, as she says: "Didn't the pansies do finely this year, Clem? And the scarlet verbenas, and the larkspurs, And the row of flaming salvia. . . . Those roses . . . they're Maréchal Niels ... my favorites. And little grandson, smell this spray of rose-geranium — Just think, when grandmother was a little tiny girl Her grandmother grew them in her yard!"
