174 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



A sunburst of evolving floral beauty is all there is of 

 carnations between Theophrastus and Charles Starr, the isle of 

 Greece and Avondale. 



There is a mysterious bond of union between painting and 

 poetry, music and flowers. They are but different manifestations 

 of the same master passion in the human mind. They sanctify 

 the spot wherever they touch the dirt of earth. 



A poet boy plowed the rugged hills beside the river Ayr, 

 and they intone the songs of Robert Burns. Angelo frescoed 

 the "Last Judgment" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 

 Rome, with such thrilling realism, that the beholder stands palsied 

 in the presence of the most mirific tragedy God can ever enact. 



Melody caressed a poor man's child at Augsburg and 

 Mozart, at the age of six, began to time the keyboard of the 

 world's sweet sounds. Tactful fingers in cross-fertilization 

 mixed life and oriency with mystic mordants in a crypt of con- 

 ception, and Buttercup rainbows Avondale with the color wealth 

 of all the zones. 



Flowers are embodied sentiment, bits of sunshine tangled with 

 life's shades, and heralds of a higher range of virtues. While 

 science, that never throbed a pulse of poetry with its Theodolite, is 

 measuring the curves and angles of these mental marvels, religion 

 with faultless prescience sees God behind them all. 



Clothed in crimson and white,. red and maroon, carmine and 

 pink, purple and gold, Dianthus Superba, with flashing beauty, 

 flings the perfumed smoke of spices from censers not lit with 

 fire, and steps with matchless grace across the threshold of the 

 Twentieth century, the unchallenged color, Queen of Flora. 



