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Long since had her sampler exhibited hearts in couples desperately transfixed with arrows, and true lovers' knots worked in deep blue silk; and it was evident she began to languish for some more interesting occupation than the rearing of sunflowers or pickling of cucumbers.

The enormous forest was broken by openings like prairies, and in every one of them the grass grew thick and tall, interspersed with sunflowers and blossoming wild plants. Through the woods ran vast networks of vines, and birds of brilliant plumage chattered in the trees. Twice, deer sprang up before them and raced away in the forest.

We have an orderly now, as General Dickinson considers it unsafe for us to go without an escort, since we were chased by an Indian the other day. That morning the little son of General Phillips was with us, and as it was not quite as warm as usual, we decided to canter down the sunflower road a little way a road that runs to the crossing of Wolf Creek through an immense field of wild sunflowers.

Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went.

The silvery radiance lit up the vast, silent expanse of nothingness, the huge dome of the sky, the limitless area of stubble and stumps of hemp and dead sunflowers, and where the mysteries of the earth merged in those of the sky it touched with its subtle radiance that unknown land on the horizon, far away, which no child of the plain has ever reached as yet.

They'm considered the best of all the flowers, and 'tis her day. Then Miss Esther shall have let me see. They'm all so pretty I don't hardly know which to choose for which oh, Miss Angela shall have the daisies, somehow they remind me of her, and vi'lets seems like Miss Esther's flower, and I'll give the sunflowers to Miss Penelope."

But as the flatterers keep coming on and on, each with his garland of tuberoses or sunflowers, he begins to think that there must be some fire where there is so much smoke, and to feel the glow of the flame which he is not able exactly to locate. He burns in sympathy with his ardent votaries, he becomes inevitably a partner in his own apotheosis.

The red walls of the farmhouse, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls of the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The two sunflowers that stood before the door, out-stared by the sun, drooped their brazen faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the stones of the kopje.

Yes, strange to say, effulgent sunshine everywhere on acre and meadow, and slanting down upon a wayside cottage garden, where a freshly-painted Christ lay drying between tall sunflowers. This cottage seemed the only shadow in this unexpectedly bright picture, for, occupied by a religious image-maker, crucifixes and wooden saints peeped wholesale out of the windows.

"One of the great pleasures is gardening. The plants that grow best are jalaps, sunflowers, roses, cornflowers, nasturtiums, verbenas, and geraniums, all of which, with the exception of the two first-named plants, require water constantly. The creepers that grow best are passion-flowers, and a small kind of green creeper with convolvulus flowers, the name of which I do not know.