ON GETTING THERE 19 



potatoes, as much as the grass is grown for hay. 

 It is the poet, not the mower, who sighs over the 

 flowers of the grass that perish ; and the poet, if he 

 happens to own hay-fields, does not hesitate to give 

 orders for the cutting at the proper time. And 

 the mower, if he has an eye for beauty, admires the 

 flowers, even though he says nothing about it, and 

 cuts them down to order. A boat -load of cut 

 hyacinth flowers, with their beauty, and their scent, 

 and their cutting off at highest perfection may 

 touch the imagination more than a four - ounce 

 bottle of heavy red -brown oil, which represents 

 the life and fragrance of half a square mile of 

 jasmine flowers. But it should not, if the jasmine 

 was only grown that the oil might be made, the 

 hyacinths equally are only grown that their roots 

 may be fine and saleable ; and when their well- 

 being demands the cutting of the flowers there is 

 no sacrifice in their going, for to this end they grew 

 and matured and came to flower. 



There is yet one other way of going to see a 

 bulb garden, for those who are fortunate enough 

 to know a grower who owns one at a so situated 

 spot. Den Heer owned one, and on a June 

 afternoon we went to it, his son, den Heer Karel, 

 and I. We started from a small quay in Haarlem, 



