86 



"The most curious feature of this destructive energy is that 

 the plants and flowers so carelessly torn from their homes prob- 

 ably give little or no satisfaction to those who take them away 

 with them. Is there, for instance, a more unsatisfactory flower 

 to make attractive in a vase than the arbutus ? It pines for its 

 screen of leaves ; the loveliness that seems so perfect when half 

 hidden becomes quite inadequate when pulled out into the glare 

 of the day and put down in a city room. The same is true of 

 most other delicate wood plants. They depend upon the charm 

 of their surroundings." In The House Beautiful, July, 1901. 



" Is there a flower lover who has gone out into the country with 

 a party of young people unaccustomed to find themselves sur- 

 rounded with green who has not noted with something very like 

 hopeless rage the immediate rush on every growing thing in the 

 neighborhood, its instant uprooting and subsequent careless toss- 

 ing aside ? Later in the day, before going home, when all the blos- 

 soms in the immediate neighborhood have been destroyed, there 

 is a search for fresh fields, and another spot is denuded. A few 

 dejected blossoms are all that is left when home is reached ; 

 nothing of any value remains out of all the lives butchered to 

 make an East Side holiday. The saddest part of it is, not that the 

 children do it, for that might be pardoned on the score of ignor- 

 ance, but that those in authority permit it without a remonstrance." 



" The flower's right to existence nobody takes into account, or 

 the harm done to the children by allowing them to think that 

 they may destroy life as they choose." 



And in this connection arises the question of public rights on 

 private property. I know that less than fifty miles from New 

 York, a man of wide and varied culture and sympathies, a mem- 

 ber of a variety of horticultural and agricultural societies, own- 

 ing a large tract of land away from any large town, has at- 

 tempted to plant the waste roadside places and private woodland 

 with wild and cultivated flowers, and repeatedly seen great bunches 

 of them carried off by people, walking or driving by, who did not 

 realize all the trouble and expense he had been to, in order to 

 beautify the roadsides for them and for others who might come 

 later. Many a prized Azalea bush has been rifled before its owner 

 knew it, often thoughtlessly and without evil intention by those 

 who "just love them." 



