The Strange Story of the Flowers 



find it, except through usefulness l< 

 and approved. In flowers, much that at 

 glance looks like idle decoration, on closer 

 scrutiny reveals itself as service in disguise. In 

 penetrating these disguises and many m< 

 other phases, the student of flowers delights to 

 busy himself. He loves, too, to detect the c< aisin- 

 ship of plants through all the change of dress 

 and habit due to their rearing under widely 

 different skies and nurture, to their being sur- 

 rounded by strangely contrasted foes and friends. 

 Often he can link two plants together only by 

 going into partnership with a student of the 

 rocks, by turning back the records of the earth 

 until he comes upon a flower long extinct, a 

 plant which ages ago found the struggl 

 life too severe for it. He ever takes care to ob- 

 serve his flowers accurately and fully, but chiefly 

 that he may rise from observation to explana- 

 tion, from bare facts to their causes, from de- 

 claring What, to understanding, Whence and 

 How. 



One of the stock resources of novelists, now 

 somewhat out of date, was the inn-keeper who 

 beamed in welcome of his guest, grasped his 

 hand in gladness, and loaded a table for him 

 in tempting array, and all with intent that 

 later in the day (or night) he might the 

 securely plunge a dagger into his victim's heart 

 — if, indeed, he had not already improv< 

 opportunity to offer to that victim's lips a 

 poisoned cup. This imagined treachery I 

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