Flowers of Mystery 443 



A great favorite in the old garden was the splen- 

 did scarlet Lychnis, to which in New England is 

 given the name of London Pride. There are two 

 old varieties : one has four petals with squared ends, 

 and is called, from the shape of the expanded flower, 

 the Maltese Cross ; the other, called Scarlet Light- 

 ning, is shown on a succeeding page; it has five 

 deeply-nicked petals. It is a flower of midsummer 

 eve and magic power, and I think it must have 

 some connection with the Crusaders, being called by 

 Gerarde Floure of Jerusalem, and Flower of Candy. 

 The five-petalled form is rarely seen ; in one old 

 family I know it is so cherished, and deemed so 

 magic a home-maker, that every bride who has gone 

 from that home for over a hundred years has borne 

 away a plant of that London Pride ; it has really 

 become a Family Pride. 



Another plant of mysterious suggestion was the 

 common Plantain. This was not an unaided instinct 

 of my childhood, but came to me through an expla- 

 nation of the lines in the chapter, " The White 

 Man's Foot," in Hiawatha : 



"Whereso'er they tread, beneath them 

 Springs a flower unknown among us ; 

 Springs the White Man's Foot in blossom." 



After my father showed me the Plantain as the 

 " White Man's Foot," I ever regarded it with a sense 

 of its unusual power ; and I used often to wonder, 

 when I found it growing in the grass, who had 

 stepped there. I have permanently associated with 

 the Plantain or Waybred a curious and distasteful 



