THE ROSES OF ASSISI.

In The Ave Maria, of February 8, 1908, the noted Danish writer, Johannes Jorgensen, tells of a visit to Assisi, and makes this passing allusion to the singular phenomenon also alluded to in The Diary of a Pilgrim: "Then there is the rose garden where the bushes are strangely flecked as if with spots of blood." When the present writer stood beside this little plot, in the early days of July, 1900, the roses were not in bloom—it was past their season in Italy—but the bushes were in leaf, of course. Strictly speaking, it is not the bushes that bear the flecks of red, but the roses and the leaves. The impression made upon one is not soon effaced. It looks for all the world as if those leaves had been sprinkled with blood. Here and there a leaf seems to have caught a drop, a few, two or three, which left a crimson stain, while most show a fleckless green. But this is not the most striking phase of the phenomenon. It has passed into a proverb that there is no rose without its thorn, though Milton, in a flight of fancy, found in our lost paradise,

But under the lovely sky of Italy and under the shadow of the Umbrian hills, in fair Assisi, famed forever as the birthplace and early home of the Poverello, grow roses without thorns. The writer felt the bushes with his hand, and proved them thornless. What is more, our little pilgrim group, of whom some have since gone on their long pilgrimage, were told on that July day, seven years ago, by the Prior of the Franciscan Monastery, a true son of Saint Francis if appearances count for aught, that time and time again was the experiment made of transplanting those bushes, and that they grew up with thorns and with stainless leaves. Here is the legend, if legend that can be called, which Nature seems to vouch for, copied from a leaflet, enclosing a spray of the rose leaves now brown with the years, which the writer brought with him from Assisi:

"One bitter winter's night, S. Francis being sorely tempted by the devil to lessen his austerities, overcame the evil one by throwing himself into a thicket of briers, and rolling himself in it till his body was all torn and bleeding. At the same moment the briers were changed into rose trees in full bloom, and a heavenly brightness shone around, and angels came to lead S. Francis to the Church of the Portiuncula, where Our Lord appeared to him in Person accompanied by His Mother and a heavenly host, and granted him the Indulgence of the Portiuncula. The miraculous rose bushes have no thorns, their leaves are stained with spots like blood in May, and can be seen in the Garden of the Friary adjoining the Portiuncula at the village of Santa Maria degli Angeli which is close to the Station of Assisi in Italy."