PIN-EYES AND THRUM-EYES 



THE descendants of Peter Bell have too well taken 

 to heart the words in which the poet rebuked them 

 for not appreciating the primrose. Instead of seem- 

 ing a yellow primrose and nothing more, the modest 

 but conspicuous blossom appeals to them as a quick 

 means of gain. They dig it up and carry it into the 

 nearest suburb, where the eager housewife buys it to 

 plant in the garden as a reminder of the time when 

 she ran the springy fields and loved the primroses 

 on their mossy banks. The poor things seem 

 strangely forlorn and wan, framed in the cold earth 

 of the suburban back yard or front garden, frankly 

 called by the architect forecourt. But the housewife 

 is nothing if not imaginative, and she grows twenty 

 years younger every time she snatches a moment to 

 look at the blossoms that the plant prepared last 

 summer to shine on a far different scene. 



But the male being with no imagination, to whom 

 the primrose is so little or so much that he can only 

 appreciate it when it is set in its own brook-bank 

 or hanger, anathematises the mercenary Peter Bell 

 and the suburban purchaser of his slaves when he 

 finds the primrose belt annually receding from the 

 town, in which he is doomed, for his sins, to live. 

 55 



