\\ 



fhas come to^ss tliat great-grandmamma is an old 

 fashioned person. Were it not for her sweet vitality we 



j should almost say hopelessly old-fashioned ; but great- 

 ""grandmamma could not conceivably be hopelessly anything 

 and the dear old flowers into which we shall form a posy for 

 her shall be the ones she loved in her early Victorian girl- 

 hood, — old-time lavender and verbenas and dahhas, petunias 

 and heliotrope, with thyme and rue and marjoram not far 

 away. 



You will remember that in the older and courtlier days 

 of the past, when hardly a belted knight of them all could 

 so much as sign his name, oratory and a certain rough poesy 

 were talents cultivated by gentlemen almost without excep- 

 tion ; and so they made rhymes and acrostics which one could 

 remember without writing, and so again they chose a flower 

 or a precious stone as a symbol of each initial and formed 

 posies and posy rings for their true loves; and though, as 

 down through the centuries the gentry gradually acquired 



the rule of three and the art of writing, yet no one need doubt 



62 



