240 IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 
will undertake to explain the occult “elec- 
tive affinity’? by which this rosy orchid is 
made so much at home under the heavy 
shadow of the Weymouth pine? 
According to the common saying, there is 
no accounting for tastes. If by this is meant 
simply that we cannot account for them, the 
statement is true enough. But if we are to 
speak exactly, there are no likes nor dislikes 
except for cause. Every freak of taste, like 
every vagary of opinion, has its origin and 
history, and, with sufficient knowledge on 
our part, could be explained and justified. 
The pine-tree and the orchid are not friends 
by accident, however the case may look to 
us who cannot see behind the present nor 
beneath the surface. There are no myster- 
les per se, but only to the ignorant. Yet 
ignorance itself, disparagingly as we talk of 
it, has its favorable side, —as it is pleasant 
sometimes to withdraw from the sun and 
wander for a season in the half-light of the 
forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to 
reach a world where there is never any dark- 
ness. In some moods, at least, I go with 
the partridge-berry vine and the lady’s-slip- 
per. It is good, I think, to live awhile 
longer in the shadow; to see as through a 
