Almost Time for May Baskets

1901

Month of May is Near

Admirers of Young Women and of Old Folks Will Hang Nosegays on Doors — Recalls Visions of Childhood and Youth — Happy Days of Yore

The youngsters will be out with their May baskets in a few nights now. The evening will be punctuated with bursts of illy suppressed laughter and "pit-a-pat" will go the small scurrying feet when the door bell bearing the nosegay has been rung. We have all hung May baskets in our time. Hung them for love and hung them for sentiment and kindness. Who has not hung May baskets? To have failed is to have missed one of the prettiest customs of the American people. There is nothing more joyous than to make the hearts of others beat with pleasure as we do acts of kindness and love to those we hold dear. And how better can this sentiment of affection and regard be expressed than through the language of flowers. Flowers are nearest the angels, and the purer the expression of sentiment the happiest the lover, be the loved one gray-haired and bent or brown-eyes with rosy cheeks.

Who has not wandered in the woodland for the pink anemone and the anemone patens of the common sort, from the meadow bottoms gleaned the caltha palustrus from its banks of yellow? Who has not had mother or sister make the baskets and arrange the tinsel, placing therein the bunches of sweet-scented blossoms? As night grew on apace and the cool May time air snuffed good in the nostrils of youth and toned the muscles to a tension for sprinting, who has not met the neighbor's boy in the woodshed or out by the front gate and with him sped away in the darkness to the home of some fair inamorata whom youthful affection has sought out and made the ideal of ideals? Softly up the front walk with the best and prettiest basket of them all you steal. Deftly it is hung o'er the knob of the big door and then — !

"Ting! Ting! Ting!" goes the bell in blatant tones.

Hip! And with a great stride you leap from the porch and race into the plutonian darkness. From a safe distance you watch the operations at the door, hear the exclamation of delight and then, if there chances to be a big brother, you light out and do some hot footing lest he catch you and discover your passion for his sister. At school next day you manage to insinuate something about May baskets and then you tell a white lie when face to face with a question of identity. You know that you fib, she knows and you both know that each other knows it — but what is the difference, she knows you hung the basket.

And the old people, God bless them, we have all hung baskets of flowers on their door-knobs, and have been happier and better for it. Now as we look back upon the hanging we believe we are happier to have hung the baskets for the old and feeble ones than for the youthful ones. Time cannot obliterate the gratification for having hung these baskets, at least, with no selfish motive, no ax to grind, nothing but pure and unadulterated kindness and a desire to make others happy.

Thus youth, passing along the short shore line of happiness, grows to middle age when May baskets may not be, with propriety, hung, when business threatens to blot out the sentiment of youth. Then it is the children and the young people steal into our lives and re act the old, old story that brings back a flood of recollections and of peace.

Miss Mulock's Romance

1881

It was "John Halifax" published after she was thirty years old, that brought her fame, and made the task of earning her daily bread a little less arduous. Seven years later she was awarded a pension of three hundred dollars a year. She was nearly forty when she was married. In 1865 Captain George Lillie Craik, an officer in the English army, who had been in the Crimea, met Miss Mulock, and although some years her junior, addressed her and succeeded in winning her hand.

They proved most congenial companions, and their married life was all they could wish, without one exception, the woman whose love for children amounted almost to a passion, who wrote 'Philip, My King,' was denied the happiness of feeling baby fingers upon her cheek or of ever hearing herself called mother. This was a severe sorrow; but even this pain has been partly assuaged.

Strangely enough, one dark rainy night, while she and her husband were speaking of children and of the joy and brightness they bring to so many dwellings, there came a loud bell ring at the and then a furious knocking. On opening the door, lying upon the sill they found a basket enclosed in heavy wrappings. When they were removed they discovered a lovely little baby only a few hours old. The child was wrapped in one roll after another of India muslin, and on its breast was pinned a note begging Mrs. Craik to be kind to the little waif thus brought to her door, and assuring her that no mean blood flowed in its veins. Tenderly she lifted the little thing in her arms, and her heart opened as warmly to take in the poor little deserted creature.

They called the child Dorothea, God-given, and she became their adopted daughter, as tenderly cherished and as passionately loved as though she had been their own.