ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD 



has greater power to attract than its thorns 

 have to repel. One feels irresistibly drawn 

 to get as near as possible to the very soul of 

 a blossom whose breath is one of the most 

 delicately sweet odors in all the world of 

 petals. 



As we seem to get closer to our friends by 

 a hand-clasp, so we instinctively try to get 

 nearer a fragrant blossom by holding it to 

 our nostrils, or by pressing its leaves. To 

 please a captious poet, we may be willing to 

 leave all but one of the blossoms on its stalk; 

 for, unlike many other plants with fragrant 

 blossoms, the sweetbrier does not specialize 

 its fragrance in its petals, but is sweet 

 through and through, branch, leaf, and 

 flower, so that one can get almost the same 

 redolence by pressing the leaves of the sweet- 

 brier as that exhaled by her petals. With 

 this redolence, which is part of the evolved 

 vocabulary of floral Esperanto, the blossoms 

 manage to say as many different things and 

 in as many different ways as the poets, from 

 one-octave to eight-octave range. To learn 

 Floralese one must adopt the same methods 



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