bailey] AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARD FLOWERS 135 



A very similar lesson or story may be made using the Jack-in-the- 

 pulpit in place of the skunk cabbage. "Jack" makes just as good 

 an inn-keeper for the purpose of a story as he does a minister. 

 The odor of "Jack's Hotel" is only slightly less fragrant than that 

 of the "Skunk Cabbage Hotel, Ltd." and the guests are quite 

 similar. 



The American Attitude Toward Flowers 



L. H. Bailey 



America is the land of cut flowers. Nowhere else does the cut- 

 flower trade assume such commanding importance. Churches 

 and homes are decorated with them. One sees the churches of the 

 Old World decorated with plants in tubs or pots. The Englishman 

 or German loves to care for a plant from the time it sprouts until 

 it dies; it is a companion. The American snips off its head and 

 puts it in his buttonhole; it is an ornament. I have sometimes 

 wondered whether the average flower buyer knows that flowers 

 grow on plants. Flowers are fleeting. 



All of us have known people who derive more satisfaction from 

 a poor plant that never blooms than others do from a bimch of 

 American Beauty Roses at $5. There is individuality — I had 

 almost said personality — in a growing, living plant, but there is 

 little of it in a detached flower. And it does not matter so much if 

 a plant is poor and weakly and scrawny. Do we not love poor and 

 crippled and crooked people ? A plant in the room on washday is 

 worth more than a bunch of flowers on Sunday. 



Extract from The Nature-Study Idea. 



Good News 



The good news has reached us that Professor L. H. Bailey and 

 family have had a successful voyage as far as Honolulu where they 

 spent twenty-four hours, which time was mostly spent in a cele- 

 bration of their advent by the overjoyed Cornellians who have 

 found homes and work on those delectable islands. The Baileys 

 plan a more extended visit in the Hawaiian Islands on their return ; 

 they are now arriving in Japan. 



