The Blue Flower Border 259 



advised of him is as obsolete as the form in which 

 it was rendered. He said it was "good in a loch 

 or licking medicine for shortness of breath." Our 

 apothecaries no longer make, nor do our physicians 

 prescribe, " licking medicines." The powdered root 

 was urged as a complexion beautifier, especially to 

 remove morphew, and as orris-root may be found 

 in many of our modern skin lotions. 



Ruskin most beautifully describes the Flower de 

 Luce as the flower of chivalry — "with a sword for 

 its leaf, and a Lily for its heart." These grand 

 clumps of erect old soldiers, with leafy swords of 

 green and splendid cuirasses and plumes of gold 

 and bronze and blue, were planted a century ago in 

 our grandmothers' garden, and were then Flower 

 de Luce. A hundred years those sturdy sentinels 

 have stood guard on either side of the garden gates — 

 still Flower de Luce. There are the same clean-cut 

 leaf swords, the same exquisite blossoms, far more 

 beautiful than our tropical Orchids, though similar 

 in shape ; let us not change now their historic 

 name, they still are Flower de Luce — the Flower 

 de Louis. 



The Violet family, with its Pansies and Ladies' 

 Delights, has honored place in our Blue Border, 

 though the rigid color list of a prosaic practical dyer 

 finds these Violet allies a debased purple instead of 

 blue. 



Our wild Violets, the blue ones, have for me a 

 sad lack for a Violet, that of perfume. They are 

 not as lovely in the woodlands as their earlier com- 

 ing neighbor, the shy, pure Hepatica. Bryant, call- 



