1863. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



263 



LADIES' DEPARTMENT. 



KEEPIWa COMPAJiTY "WITH PLOWEKS. 



There is much nonsensical prattle about flowers, 

 80 there is about the sky and the stars, about 

 mountain and ocean, about thunder and lightning. 

 But the prattle only demonstrates its own folly 

 and does not harm the beauty and glory with 

 which it trifles. The glorious and beautiful in 

 nature may perha])s be worn threadbare as illus- 

 trations, but as realities they are unchanged and 

 unchangeable. They are forever fresh, forever at- 

 tractive. This is the season of flowers, they abound 

 everywhere, in city and country, in field and gar- 

 den, ill the woods and by the wayside ; they are 

 wild and domesticated, cultivated and spontane- 

 ous ; they are of all colors, of all odors, of all 

 shapes, of all sizes ; and just now almost every- 

 body can have plenty of them. IJut their abun- 

 dance and ubiquity do not diminish the inherent 

 sweetness or loveliness of the least of them. The 

 children may gather them with transport or crush 

 them with recklessness ; they may be allowed to 

 wither on the parlor mantles and thence be thrown 

 into the streets, but flowers are still flowers, they 

 are heaven's expression of beauty and grace, and 

 the eye, the mind, and the heart of man respond 

 to ihclr silent speech. 



But what do we mean by keeping company with 

 flowers ? Who has not hummed or whistled a 

 tune to get rid of the feeling of solitude ? What 

 friend of tobacco has not professed to find com- 

 pany, a sort of companion in his pipe, or segar, or 

 worse still, his quid ? How, in hours of loneli- 

 ness, do the keys of the piano or the strings of the 

 violin seem to grow into a sort of disguised per- 

 son, and enter into mysterious relieving converse 

 with us. But of all companions not personal, 

 none are so charming as flowers. Birds and dogs, 

 and all the lower animal tribes, must give way. 

 But the flowers we ask as our companions are not 

 dead oies, nay, not even plucked flowers. Once 

 severed from their connection with the soil, their 

 poetic personality passes away with their vitality, 

 we regard them now as having suffered violence, 

 and as doomed to die before their time. Their 

 fragrance may be intense and delightful, but there 

 is little more in it to stimulate the fancy than in 

 a vial of essence. With the living flower we feel 

 we have communed as with a fellow creature, we 

 have touched it and it has nodded and trembled 

 in answer, but we have left it unharmed and can 

 hope to visit it again with renewed pleasure from 

 our former interview. 



This delicate sense of the flower's life may be 

 poetical, but it is real. Who that loves flowers 

 has not felt it ? With what anxiety, a bright 

 anxiety to be seen, have we watched the growth 

 of the tender plant ; if any distase threatened, or 

 actually invaded it, what solicitude we have felt, 

 with what care we sought remedies, and with what 

 tender delicacy applied them ! And when the 

 budding time came, with what a quiet, real, un- 

 selfish joy we have seen the tiny thing take shape, 

 and watched it grow, and color, and swell, and 

 finally open. And then if, during the time of its 

 glory, anything happens to its stem — if, for in- 

 stance, it should be broken, how true a sorrow- 

 follows, and what a wish for healing and restor- 

 ing skill. Indeed, it was only the other day that 



we saw a man, full of this gentle pity for wound- 

 ed flowers, patiently laboring to set the broken 

 stallv of a verbena. It repaid him by living, and 

 the blossom kept its lustre while the stem firmly 

 knit at the jjoiut of fracture. 



There resides in living flowers a latent charity, 

 a power, that is, to evolve this "l)ond of perfect- 

 ness" from the sterile heart. When a man wants 

 flowers, it is not to shut them up, but to jjlace 

 them in the light, to give them a conspicuous place. 

 Ho is anxious that his pleasure should not be sol- 

 itary. In his bargains he may desire no partner, 

 in his inventions which are to bring him lucre he 

 may shut himself up in the dark until they are 

 completed, and may only shout his Eureka after 

 he has fenced in his profits with a patent; but his 

 flowers o])en his heart, he wants rich and poor, 

 aye, every living thing, to see them. 



Hence, it is always a sad work to be ol)liged, by 

 the approach of winter, to take into the house, 

 plants that cannot endure frost. It is like bring- 

 ing in the children from their innocent and beau- 

 tiful ])lays. But we avenge ourselves as best we 

 may by ])lacing our pets in the windows, or better 

 still, when we have the means, in a conservatory, 

 a house of glass, through which the sun may en- 

 ter, and from which a good furnace will exclude 

 the frost. Yet, after all, flowers are most at home 

 out of the house, out of any and every liouse. 

 The sky is the roof for the childrtn of the sun. 

 And toward flowers under cover we are apt to 

 have a feeling near akin to that with which we re- 

 gard a caged l)ird. The bird, perhaps, is beauti- 

 ful, his note is sweet, he may be happy, but we 

 more than suspect he would feel better if he could 

 fly a little farther, and if he did not occasionally 

 strike his wings against the delicate but hard iron. 

 Our conscience is apt to trouble us, with'the feel- 

 ing that with all its gilding the cage is a prison, 

 and that, after all, the bird's song may for him be 

 a dirge. So is it with caged flowers ; they are in- 

 carcerated, living by the grate or furnace instead 

 of having the whole glorious atmosj)here for its 

 windows. 



It is not needful that a man shouid be a botan- 

 ist to find happy company in flowers. Their 

 beauty is not gotten at by scientific prying. 

 "Physician, art thou ? One, all eyes ; 



Flillosopher ! a flnperinij flavc. 

 One Uiat woulil peep and botanize 

 Upon his mother's grave." 



Their glory is not in the pith of the dead stalk, 

 nor in the shreds of dissected bloom, Init in the 

 symmetrical, radiant whole. It is in this form and 

 aspect they win f^ur love. Wordsworth has a lit- 

 tle poem on "Loving and Liking," in which he 

 wisely and charmingly teaches us that we are not 

 to talk of loving the objects of our appetites. 

 Even a strawberry, beautiful as it is on the vine, 

 where, too, it may be loved, when oi'.ce it comes on 

 the table is only to be liked. In this light, it seems 

 to us, flowers that have been pulled are to be re- 

 garded ; this is the florist's attachment to flowers. 

 Genuine, elevating, refining love for flowers must 

 find them living, and out of doors, and must re- 

 gard them only as creatures of heuuty and there- 

 fore a joy forever. 



Love is to domestic life what butter is to bread 

 — it possesses little nourishment in itself, but it 

 gives suhstantials a grand relish, without which 

 they would be hard to swallow. 



