THE SWEET PEA. 49 



have carried uothiug to perfection yet. One by one the flowers 

 that have great possibilities in them make their advent into this 

 new era. They have only made their graceful bow to us. You 

 have only begun to know a flower when you see it as it is. You 

 must have the prophetic anointing and see it as it is to be. 



I felt deeply touched as I went into the dwarf canna house at 

 the Royal Horticultural trial gardens with Mr. Eckford and 

 heard him, as he stood before the flaming cannas, say he would 

 like to begin life over again and devote himself to them. It was 

 the soul of this old florist, who is through his work, that looked into 

 the future of the dwarf canna and saw the vision of its coming 

 glory. To see a flower with the heavenly eye, and love it with 

 the heavenly heart, is to drink in its full prophecy, and it is that 

 which consecrates the florist and lifts his business above the slime 

 of commerce to the ethereal purity and pleasure that God has 

 hidden in his beautiful handiwork. 



I know we are living in the football era, and men gravitate 

 towards half-civilized and even brutal athletics, and call it pleas- 

 ure ; but floriculture is at the other end of man's development, 

 and is both beautiful and manly. 



I have tried to study one flower, but not a day passes Avhen I 

 do not blush because people write to me as if I knew something 

 about that flower. I know enough now to know that I know 

 almost nothing about it. I am in love with it — wedded to it — 

 learning about it. I have put ten years of Jiard work on it, but 

 it is too deep for me. I wonder if your roses and your carnations 

 impress you that way. I am sure you have a man's work before 

 you, to master the rose and the carnation. How wonderfully 

 their increasing beauty rewards you, and yet keeps you humble. 

 It is a grand thing to be occupied with something that rewards 

 you with pure pleasure and at the same time gives you a humble 

 estimate of yourself. That is the divine mission of floriculture. 

 Take Knj flower you please — there is room enough for mental 

 and spiritual expansion in any one, and your pride will have as 

 many falls as there are days in the year. Pardon this minis- 

 terial digression. 



Now let us take a little history of the Sweet Pea. So far as 

 I can learn, Frangois Cupani, an Italian botanist in Sicily, about 

 1700. was the first cultivator of this flower. There appear to 

 have been four original varieties, two of them natives of Ceylon. 



