DANDELIONS 21 
broken. I could leap into rebellion myself if 
there seemed any reasonable ground for thinking 
it could succeed. Yet multitudinous attempts 
having ultimated in ignominious failure, it seems 
useless to rebel. There is no fun in getting 
squelched. There is, I am informed, fun in 
squelching, though that is gossip. I have no per- 
sonal information under that head. Outwardly, 
I am unsmiling and, to look at, even rancid, but 
inwardly I am booming in salvos of laughter. 
Every dandelion which in flat defiance of the 
head of this house bursts into laughter like a 
peal of bells, charms me and challenges me in the 
phrase of Lady Macbeth, “My lord, sleek o’er 
your rugged looks.” 
Lest I make myself misunderstood, I haste to 
say that my love for the dandelion is not rooted 
primarily in the delight I find in beholding the 
head of our house defied. No, that attitude of 
mind is, so to say, a thistle which grows in my 
soul, but my soul is not a thistle field, but a dande- 
lion field. I love the dandelion, love its lavish 
unsullenness, its untamable glee, its amazed gold, 
its intricate splendor, its fabulous wealth, its 
declaration that close against the ground may 
spring a glee and glory which words do but en- 
cumber and do not elucidate. They are the very 
blossoming out of the eternal and regal surprise 
of this world. They transfigure the ground with 
daylight. They glow so that if the sun were 
dead, they could furnish the sky with dawn 
