OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 

 I 



THIS morning, when I went to look at my flowers, 

 surrounded by the white fence which protects them 

 from the gentle cows grazing in the meadow, I saw 

 again in my mind all that blossoms in the woods, the fields, 

 the gardens, the orangeries and the green-houses; and I 

 thought of all that we owe to the world of marvels which the 

 bees visit. 



Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not 

 know the flowers? If these did not exist, if they had always 

 been hidden from our gaze, as are probably a thousand no 

 less fairy sights that are all around us, but invisible to our 

 eyes, would our character, our moral system, our sense of 

 the beautiful, our aptitude for happiness be quite the same? 

 We should, it is true, have other splendid manifestations of 

 luxury, exuberance and grace in nature ; other dazzling efforts 

 of the infinite forces : sun, stars, moonlight, sky and sea, dawns 

 and twilights, mountain and plain, forest and river, light and 

 trees and, lastly, nearer to us, birds, precious stones and 

 woman. These are the ornaments of our planet. Yet, save 



