asphalte, taking leave to live and let live. It has taken the little
strip of ground next to the asphalte, between this and the kerb, and
again the refuse of ground between the kerb and the roadway. The man of
business walking to the station with a bag could have his asphalte all
unbroken, and the butcher's boy in his cart was not annoyed. The grass
seemed to respect everybody's views, and to take only what nobody wanted.
But these gay and lowly ways will not escape a vestry.

There is no wall so impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer's grass will
attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, to win the purple
slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority of the suburbs it has
put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch of cottages has given it an
opportunity. It has perched and alighted in showers and flocks. It has
crept and crawled, and stolen its hour. It has made haste between the
ruts of cart wheels, so they were not too frequent. It has been stealthy
in a good cause, and bold out of reach. It has been the most defiant
runaway, and the meekest lingerer. It has been universal, ready and
potential in every place, so that the happy country--village and field
alike--has been all grass, with mere exceptions.

And all this the grass does in spite of the ill-treatment it suffers at
the hands, and mowing-machines, and vestries of man. His ideal of grass
is growth that shall never be allowed to come to its flower and
completion. He proves this in his lawns. Not only does he cut the
coming grass-flower off by the stalk, but he does not allow the mere
leaf--the blade--to perfect itself. He will not have it a "blade" at
all; he cuts its top away as never sword or sabre was shaped. All the
beauty of a blade of grass is that the organic shape has the intention of
ending in a point. Surely no one at all aware of the beauty of lines
ought to be ignorant of the significance and grace of manifest intention,