The Strange Story of the Flowers 



renewed if the plants are succulent and if there 

 is any risk of mildew. But a dried plant after 

 all is only a mummy. Its colours are gone; its 

 form bruised and crumpled, gives only a faint 

 suggestion of it as it lived and breathed. Other 

 and more pleasant reminders of our summer 

 rambles can be ours. With a camera of fair size 

 it is easy to take pictures of flowers at their best; 

 these pictures can be coloured in their natural tints 

 with happy effect. In this art Mrs. Cornelius 

 Van Brunt, of New York, has attained extra- 

 ordinary success. Or, instead of the camera, 

 why not at first invoke the brush and colour-box ? 

 Only a little skill in handling them is enough for 

 a beginning. Practice soon increases deftness 

 in this art as in every other, and in a few short 

 weeks floral portraits are painted with a truth to 

 nature denied the unaided pencil. For what 

 flower, however meek and lowly, could ever tell 

 its story in plain black and white ? 



The amateur painter of flowers learns a good 

 many things by the way; at the very outset, that 

 drawing accurate and clear must be the ground- 

 work of any painting worthy the name. Both 

 in the use of pencil and brush there must be a 

 degree of painstaking observation, wholesome as 

 a discipline and delightful in its harvests. How 

 many of us, unused to the task of careful observa- 

 tion, can tell the number of the musk-mallow's 

 petals, or mark on paper the depth of fringe on a 

 gentian, or match from a series of dyed silks the 

 hues of a common buttercup ? Drawing and 

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