Friendly Flowers 



again, and, fortunately, those who make a trade 

 of preaching have most often a plentiful lack of 

 knowledge of the wonders of the world. But we, 

 whose lives flicker, and glow, and sputter through 

 sixty years and ten, are very properly grateful for 

 these other creatures whose real existence is a 

 matter of days, sometimes of hours. Something 

 that perhaps we have lost is theirs : much that we 

 have gained they never know. That there is kin- 

 ship between us all I have no doubt, for not other- 

 wise can I explain the delight that everyone of us 

 can gain from even the humblest flower. 



Some flowers there are so joyous that they 

 invoke a dancing spirit, and it is recorded of 

 Linnaeus — who was by no means without a sense 

 of humour — that, when he first saw the gorse in 

 bloom, he wept. So the first sight of buttercups 

 and daisies will make a grimy-minded London 

 child kick and leap and yell. . . . On my south 

 wall is a blue convolvulous major (ipomcea) that 

 every day in June hangs out its brilliant trumpets 

 of a colour so pure, that Jane wept when she saw 

 it, and Elisabeth was moved, and I surfer always, 

 for what I feel could only be expressed in verse or 

 music, and in neither have I any skill. . . . And 

 it is known how often flowers have helped the 

 sick to recover, while the red rose has told many 



203 



