THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 



fortify his little faith by beholding how the wild flowers are 

 clothed. But the moral of the Flower Show is that if a man can in 

 cooperation with the Creator work such miracles in the culture of 

 flowers, what ought he not to do in the cultivation of the faculties 

 of children or even in the improvement of his own perennial self? 



But quite aside from the moral, the sheer enjoyment of these 

 flowers (which will doubtless find their way into hospitals, schools 

 and the homes of the shut-ins before they are "cast into the oven") 

 makes for a paradisiacal state so long as they last and leaves a 

 wholesome memory of color and perfume that will last longer 

 than the flowers themselves. A flower show would be the last 

 place on earth in which to start a riot or to blaspheme an enemy. 

 It was because of this eiTect of flowers in "destroying all con- 

 taminations" that Buddha put first among his seven shops in the 

 "City of Righteousness" and in the "Street of Earnest Medita- 

 tions" a flower-shop ; for this was the list of his shops : a Flower- 

 shop, a Perfume-shop, a Fruit-shop, a Medicine-shop, an Herb- 

 shop, an Ambrosia-shop, a Jewel-shop — and a General-shop. 



Into the Flower-shop one is commanded by Buddha to go and 

 "buy a subject for meditation." And if there is one thing we 

 need in our Western urban life more than another, it is that for 

 which Buddha's Flower-shop furnished delectable subjects — medi- 

 tation. So is "deliverance" promised even from the muck and 

 refuse of New York streets, far from Eden and Buddha's City, 

 where children beg for tickets to see the gardens, far more beauti- 

 ful than the one could have been in the midst of which our scrip- 

 tural ancestors were placed and from which they were driven forth 

 to earn their bread in the sweat of their faces. Through a culture 

 of which the Flower Show gives but the exquisite simile, man 

 finds his way toward another paradise. 



504 



