If you do not read Chinese poetry, do not know any Chinese friends with any poetry in them, but nevertheless want to learn something of the aesthetic feelings of generations of poets and painters in China, to know the timbre and color of their sensibilities, you can hardly do better than learning to appreciate the beauty of La Mei trees, and eventually to love them and to miss them when you do not see them, as thousands of us, living away from our land of birth, miss them whenever the first snow falls, or else when the air of early spring, with a hint of warmth, promises a thaw.

La Mei, or Chimonanthus praecox, is a wintersweet with such grace in the disposition of its branches that when on a sunny day in winter their bare shadows are cast on the snow, a luminous blue against white, anyone weary of the humdrum of life, or saddened by the sorrows that from time to time befall us, will find in the beauty before him not only solace but also keen delight and pleasure. La Mei trees bloom while their branches are still bare of foliage, in the weeks bridging January and February, which include the Chinese New Year. Their flowers have waxy petals, pale yellow and translucent, and a sweet fragrance of their own. . . .