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t Ineed not delay to recount examples of the power of 
flowers to affect the mind—that is universal, though varying in 
meditation, where John Burroughs plies his fishline and Dr. Van 
Dyke brings home both fish and story, where Bradford Torrey 
listens to the song of birds, where Olive Thorne Miller and Edith 
M. TI the warrant of their sex to be conservators 
of beauty for the race. But these WHE ve nature their 
4 
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o 
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Oo 
fa 
a 
Hane it is my p se 
direc’ ee to aaa ea to turn to that greater body of 
the m ry nds repeat to us their long-pent story of the 
power of flowers to impress the Egyptian mind 4000 years 
a n times that number are embalmed in the pages of the 
t the lover of nature who listens in vain e 
favorite passage rem er their number, for flowers are written 
like stars in the sky. has become in fact so 
Yy com ng to hear the praises of flowers from the poets 
that I shall turn instead to prose, and inquire if that prove too 
heavy ts substantial to fest alae the light graces o a pane 
flower. 
flowery or florid prose ; the cause of that i is the author’s scapes 
exuberance; nor are flowers any more apt to be associated with 
such prose than any other ; but they supply to good prose of any 
kind valued illustrations, nad the best writers have not failed to 
A 
m wif we hear it said that a prose writer 
can write a book of permanent value without reference to flowers 
let us turn to the essayists and observe their practice Sag 
eat 
and living master of prose style I take up the work of eae 
I open his ‘‘ Shakespeare,’ and the first random sentence I read 
uses flowers as an illustration, where he bas of Shakespeare's 
four greatest comedies as a “ flowery square.’ 
