SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. Ill 



the conceited youth gazed on till he pined to death where he sat. 

 When the sorrowing Naiads, after preparing a funeral pile, searched 

 for the youth, his body was missing. 



Instead whereof a yellow flower was found, 

 With tufts of white about the bottom crowned. 



And ever since has the fair Narcissus bloomed sadly over the fabled 

 mountain and the fateful brook. 



Shelley put the old legend into verse when he spoke of 



The Narcissi, the fairest among them all, 

 Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess 

 Till they die of their own sweet loveliness. 



Now comes the dandelion — poor, plain little dandelion. Who would 

 guess that an attractive personal history might be folded away within 

 its commonplace leaves ? Like many a plain, useful flower in the human 

 world, the dandelion has little romance in its own life, yet because of 

 its sympathetic nature, many are the heart stories of others that have 

 been confided to its keeping. 



The fair maiden who can not wait for the longed-for words from • 

 the lover's lips, shyly gathers one of these yellow flowers, and plucking 

 off one by one the yellow leaflets, murmurs as she does so, " He loves 

 me, he loves me not," till the last petal falls to the ground, when she 

 smiles with a gladdened heart to find that the number was uneven. 



The unromantic school-boy has another use to which he subjects 

 the homely blossom. When the feathery pod has ripened, he blows 

 again and again at the winged seeds till the flower stalk is bare. As 

 many puffs as it takes to scatter the down, so many hours of the day 

 have fleeted by. 



The ripened seed-pod, opening and closing as it does at certain 

 regular hours, serves the shepherd as a barometer, for the same re- 

 sponsive down predicts storm or sunshine to the watchful eye. 



The deeply notched leaves which are thought to resemble the 

 teeth of a lion gave the plant its name. Because of this imagined 

 similarity, the plant was called " lion-toothed " or " dent de lion." 



These are only a few of the interesting things which are said and 

 known of the spring flowers named. Of the large remaining flower 

 family there are still more beautiful sentiments written and still more 

 wonderful legends told. 



Hardly a poet has existed who has not said something worth re- 

 membering about the flowers which many who love them best are fond 

 of calling "earth stars." Only one subject, that of love, has inspired 

 more pens than the elevating theme of flowers. Love and flowers ! 

 How naturally we connect those two words. The latter, awakening 



