NEWS OF SPRING 



guard against over- ambitious dreams, does not this allow us 

 to hope that we may perhaps learn to elude or to transgress 

 other laws no less time-honoured, more akin to ourselves and 

 far more important? For, in the end, all things hold to- 

 gether; all things go hand to hand; all things obey the same 

 invisible principles; all things share the same spirit, the same 

 substance in the terrifying and wonderful problem; and the 

 most modest victory gained in the matter of a flower may one 

 day disclose to us an infinity of the untold. 



6 



That is why I love the chrysanthemum ; that is why I fol- 

 low its evolution with a brotherly interest. It is, among 

 familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most 

 tractable and the most attentive of all that we meet on life's 

 long way. It bears flowers impregnated with the thought 

 and will of man: flowers already human, so to speak. And, 

 if the vegetable world is some day to reveal to us one of the 

 messages that we are awaiting, perhaps it will be through this 

 flower of the dead that we shall learn the first secret of ex- 

 istence, even as, in another kingdom, it is probably through 

 the dog, the almost thinking guardian of our homes, that we 

 shall discover the mystery of animal life. . . . 



[170] 



