V 

 A BIT OF USELESSNESS 



A MOST admirable servant of mine once risked 

 his life to reach a magnificent Bornean orchid, 

 and tried to poison me an hour later when he 

 thought I was going to take the plant away from 

 him. This does not mean necessarily that we 

 should look with suspicion upon all gardeners 

 and lovers of flowers. It emphasizes, rather, the 

 fact of the universal and deep-rooted apprecia- 

 tion of the glories of the vegetable kingdom. 

 Long before the fatal harvest time, I am certain 

 that Eve must have plucked a spray of apple 

 blossoms with perfect impunity. 



A vast amount of bad poetry and a much less 

 quantity of excellent verse has been written about 

 flowers, much of which follows to the letter Mark 

 Twain's injunction about Truth. It must be ad- 

 mitted that the relations existing between the 

 honeysuckle and the bee are basely practical and 

 wholly selfish. A butterfly's admiration of a 

 flower is no whit less than the blossom's conscious 



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