JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 321 



flowers (the familiar daisy is one) which close in 

 the evening, folding themselves up or covering 

 their round discs with their petals as a child covers 

 her face with her fingers, and this seems right and 

 natural and consistent with Nature's plan. We are 

 not yet acquainted with all the secrets of a flower, 

 but we at least know that its life and growth are 

 from the sun and suppose that when the light and 

 heat are withdrawn the work of elaboration going 

 on within it is suspended, that the flower is asleep 

 and at rest until the vitalising influence returns. 

 Why then the extraordinary waste of daylight by 

 this one flower, when all others require all the 

 light and heat they can get ? Has Johnnie's 

 " unconscious intelligence " found out an easier 

 way — a method of work by means of which he is 

 able to accomplish in his day of three or four hours 

 as much as others can do in their twelve to sixteen 

 hours' day ? Johnnie then should be the right 

 flower for the Socialist to wear on his day, which 

 would have to be in June. 



I had asked my man how he could have let his 

 field get into such a condition, since the tough wiry 

 stems of the goat's-beard could not be very good 

 for his cows as winter feed, and all he could say 

 was that it " had come like that of itself " ; that 

 in the two previous years there had been a slight 

 sprinkling of the yellow flower— he didn't like to 

 name it. But how it had come about was now 

 plain to see, for before he started mowing balls of 

 down could be seen all over the field, shedding 



Y 



