SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS 139 



more I love you, and Angels' tears, and Tears of 

 Christ, with many more. 



A writer on our wild flowers, in speaking of their 

 vernacular names of this kind, has said : " Could 

 we penetrate to the original suggestive idea that 

 called forth its name, it would bring valuable in- 

 formation about the first openings of the human 

 mind towards nature ; and the merest dream of 

 such a discovery invests with a strange charm the 

 words that could tell, if we could understand, so 

 much of the forgotten infancy of the human race." 



What a roll of words and what a mighty and 

 mysterious business is here made of a very simple 

 little matter ! It is a charming example of the 

 strange helplessness, not to say imbecility, which 

 affects most of those who have been trained in our 

 mind-killing schools ; trained not to think, but 

 taught to go for anything and everything they 

 desire to know to the books. If the books in the 

 British Museum fail to say why our ancestors 

 hundreds of years ago named a flower None- so- 

 pretty or Love-in-a-mist, why then we must be 

 satisfied to sit in thick darkness with regard to 

 this matter until some heaven-born genius descends 

 to illuminate us ! Yet I daresay there is not a 

 country child who does not occasionally invent 



