1 88 On the Campus 



idea of advantage to be gained. Sometimes, however, you 

 may yet hear a person exclaim, * ' That looks good enough 

 to eat ! ' ' But children mirabile dictu ! will still eat 

 colored paints, and every sort of wild fruit that shines. 



The sense of smell represents perhaps a much more 

 primitive service. A man may see a great many oranges 

 and not be moved to eat the fruit at all ; but let him once 

 smell it, and the case is different; even though, in all 

 experience, the orange smells a great deal better than it 

 tastes. 



But, as has been said, as adults we are generally far 

 past the mere utilitarian consideration of fruits. "We 

 may look upon an orange-tree in green and gold and re- 

 joice in the magnificence of the spectacle, even delight 

 to see it spread in splendor over a thousand acres, with 

 never a thought of hunger. And it is just at this point 

 that the plant once more becomes our servant and stands 

 ready to respond abundantly to these our late-acquired 

 and high perceptions, the longings and aspirations of the 

 sentient soul. And so we come to the admiration of 

 fruit and flowers which we may not eat at all; we may 

 even enjoy their odors and never think of food; breathe 

 their fragrance with not a thought of banquets, until we 

 come to the love of all these things in their purity, 

 singly and in mass, and love them at length for their 

 own sakes, and seek to have them near us ; to place our- 

 selves often under their spell and presence; to find in 

 them a language suitable to our thought; to read into 

 them meanings that in nature they never knew ; to bind 

 roses on the brow of beauty, orange-blossoms into 'the 

 bridal wreath ; and lilies even on the caskets of the dead, 



