272 TRANSACTIONS OF THE KANKAKEE 



The botanist saw that the flora of earth was unlike, and yet alike 

 in form. Kinds varied, yet there were similarities, and from them 

 slowly evolved a .systematic classification. 



Occasionally a man tells me: " 1 would not give you a cent for 

 every flower you have," and yet before he has made the circuit of the 

 greenhouse will request the man for half a dozen plants. He sees 

 something that demands his attention, arouses his curiosity, arouses, 

 perhaps, a sentiment that only sleeps because the object that could 

 awaken it had never been seen. He would have smiled with incre- 

 dulity had he been told he could see beauty in a flower, to raise a 

 sentiment of pleasure and involuntarily draw words of praise. I 

 have seen men, after the most heartless disregard for your feelings, 

 uttering words of deepest, wholesale contempt, pause before a flower, 

 here and there, and say: ''That is pretty," "That is a handsome 

 thing." One man has declared, more than once, he would trample 

 upon the choicest flower as soon as the vilest weed of the field. 



Some men, in the struggle for competence that often never 

 comes, and as often delays its coming until the very evening of mid- 

 dle life, have dwarfed or extinguished the power to derive satisfaction 

 from anything outside of the narrow sphere by whose walls time 

 has slowly environed them. In such we do not look for that gener- 

 ous breadth of mind and discernment that can see the diamond 

 beyond the rough covering — the finger of God in the ornamental 

 creation. 



I have yet to see the first boy that does not look with honest 

 admiration upon a collection of flowers. The gay colors attract him 

 strangely; before them he stands the longest time. Every faculty 

 a boy possesses is ready for action as soon as its corresponding object 

 is seen. All development beyond this is the result of cultivation. 

 The passion is just awakened, afterward comes the growth. 



In my younger days I was accustomed to see in my mother's 

 flower garden the annuals and shrubs, that now might be truly called 

 the "rare plants," but I was not conscious of their beauty. I have 

 no recollection of deriving satisfaction from their existence there. 



The feeling that ivants, the passion that loves, was yet unborn. 

 My botanical studies at school were ended, the local flora dissected, 

 analyzed and classed; still I never looked on a flower and said, sin- 

 cerely, " It is beautiful." The birth, the awakening, was reserved 

 for maturer years. 



A few years ago I was introduced to two ladies in a window 

 garden of flowers. There I fell in love —not with the ladies — with 

 the brightness and cheer of that bit of green. A full-grown " sea 

 onion " was wonderously magnificent to me, and the tangled smilax, 

 from which soon after was gathered a tribute of love for a sweet 

 little girl called to eternity, awakened a slumbering faculty; and I 

 saw a new use for flowers, and have gathered them around me ever 

 since. 



