Explore "The Retrospect" by Ada Cambridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I had a day of days before I left H -- .
It was the 17th August, and the weather the very best that England could do. Roses were still plentiful in the beautifully kept English gardens -- Dorothy Perkins painted herself on the landscape far and near -- and mauve and purple clematis foamed over tawny house walls in delicious contrast of colour, with as little reserve as in our more ardently wooing air. A favourite ribbon-work of the little dark blue campanula was noticeable everywhere, bordering flower-beds and window-boxes; it was as positive as the blue pencil-marks of the Customs on my travelling baggage, and these oddly remind me of it. Withal a hint of autumn, gentle and gracious, mellowed the summer scene -- a _red_ rowan-tree in one fine country garden; that splendid burning-bush, the Virginian sumach, in another; above all -- the sweetest "note" to me -- the little wild, incomparable harebell, the English harebell, thick in the grass of the roadsides.