146 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 



decorative work. Were it possible to select 

 a &quot;national flower&quot; out of hand, perhaps 

 no more happy choice could be made than 

 this. But what an absurd idea it is ! I 

 fear that we are hardly poetic enough as a 

 people to be entitled to a national flower. 

 If we were, we should know that this is a 

 matter to be determined by feeling, by nat 

 ural growth, by common consent, not by 

 popular vote. In the state of New York a 

 ballot for a state flower was taken among 

 the children of the public schools. The 

 majority voted for the golden-rod. But 

 what golden-rod ? I think there are said 

 to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 

 seventy species, varying in all sorts of ways, 

 and, graceful and beautiful as some of them 

 are, they are not definite and distinctive 

 in flower, but rather attractive masses or 

 sprays. 



Let us have a national flower, if you 

 please, and all other good things, when the 

 time comes and we deserve them, but do 

 not let us reach them by way of the factory 

 system. Perhaps it is one of many indica 

 tions that we are outgrowing our first crude 

 national stage that the question is raised, 

 but we can afford to go slowly until ideas 

 of this kind cease to be novel. Let us reso- 



