THE ARROW-LEAVED VIOLET. 



If all flowers are thus, thought-awakeners to the thoughtful, 

 there must be a peculiar charm of this sort in the Violet. 



Poor crazed Ophelia, offering to Laertes, one by one, the 

 flowers of her wayside gathering, says, — 



" There is pansies, that's for thoughts." 



Pansies and this idea of thought must have got wedded early, 

 for Ophelia's phrase only translates into English the meaning of 

 the name which is doubtless derived from the French word, 

 fensee, thought. But pansies are only civilized and cultivated 

 violets, — Viola tricolor, — violets whose environments have been 

 made more favorable to the development of possible beauties, 

 and show what cultivation can do in improving wild nature. 



That the pansy and other violets should have been suggestive 

 of thought, or thoughtfulness, is by no means a wonder to 

 me. Indeed, I can hardly see how the modest way it has of 

 hanging down its head, in a quiet, thoughtful, pensive fashion, 

 could have suggested any other association to the mind of a 

 reflective observer. 



" I would give you some violets," Ophelia says, " but they 

 withered all, when my father died;" which gives us a hint of 

 another association connected with the violet. It was early 

 consecrated alike in rural life and poetic imagery to the memory 

 of the departed. In the language of flowers, Shakespeare assures 

 us, " The violet is for faithfulness ; " there being, I suppose, some 

 connection between that quality and its " true blue " color. It 

 was adopted by the Bonapartes as their family emblem, perhaps 

 on account of this significance. 



The modesty, as well as the beauty, of this charming spring 



