8i 



IX. 



VERONICA. 



This pretty little blue flower, growing so 

 abundantly beside the footpath, is called in 

 English speedwell, and in botanical Latin 

 veronica. Thereby hangs a sufficiently pretty 

 legendary tale. Everybody knows how the 

 napkin with which a compassionate maiden 

 wiped the face of Christ on the morning of 

 the crucifixion bore ever after the imprint of 

 the divine features. The miraculous portrait 

 thus preserved as the one genuine picture of 

 Our Lord was known in a mongrel Greek 

 and Latin phrase as the vera icon^ the true 

 eikon or image of the martyred Saviour. By 

 a natural transposition of sound and sense, 



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