Everything speaks a private language to each of
us that we can never translate to others. I do not know what the lilac says
to you; but to me it talks of a garden-gate over which it grew long ago. I
am a child again, standing within the gate, and I see the red-coated
soldiers marching along with jolly jests and snatching the lilac sprays
from the tree as they pass. The emotion of pride that these heroes should
honour our lilac tree by ravishing its blossoms all comes back to me,
together with a flood of memories of the old garden and the old home and
the vanished faces. Why that momentary picture should have fixed itself in
the mind I cannot say; but there it is, as fresh and clear at the end of
nearly fifty years as if it were painted yesterday, and the lilac tree
bursting into blossom always unveils it again.
It is these multitudinous associations that give life its colour and its
poetry. They are the garnerings of the journey, and unlike material gains
they are no burden to our backs and no anxiety to our mind.
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