FIELD FLOWERS 



3 



They are interesting and incomprehensible. They are 



vaguely called the ^Weeds." They serve no purpose. Here 

 and there, a few, in very old villages, retain the spell of con- 

 tested virtues. Here and there, one of them, down at the 

 bottom of the apothecary's or herbalist's jars, still awaits the 

 coming of the sick man faithful to the infusions of tradition. 

 But sceptic medicine will have none of them. No longer are 

 they gathered according to the olden rites; and the science of 

 "Simples" is dying out in the housewife's memory. A merci- 

 less war is waged upon them. The husbandman fears them; 

 the plough pursues them; the gardener hates them and has 

 armed himself against them with clashing weapons : the spade 

 and the rake, the hoe and the scraper, the weeding-hook, the 

 mattock. Along the highroads, their last refuge, the passer-by 

 crushes and the waggon bruises them. In spite of all, they 

 are there: permanent, assured, teeming, peaceful; and not one 

 but answers the summons of the sun. They follow the seasons 

 without swerving by an hour. They take no account of man, 

 who exhausts himself in conquering them, and, so soon as he 

 rests, they spring up in his footsteps. They live on, audacious, 

 immortal, untamable. They have peopled our flower-beds 



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