VIII 



OTHER FLOWERS 



T)ARTS of this country are now, in August, like 

 -"■ Holland in May, the time of tulips. Gay 

 patchworks of color from the gladiolus fields are a 

 not uncommon sight, and many hybrids are com- 

 ing from interested amateurs, as well as from com- 

 mercial growers. I sometimes think, in looking at 

 our industrial cities and their people, of that old 

 figure of the warp and woof of life; and if these 

 people, many of them so weary, so cheap-looking, 

 make up the warp of town life of our country, it 

 is the sculptors, the poets, architects, and design- 

 ers who brighten the fabric with threads of silver 

 and of gold; it is the painters, the musicians, the 

 planners of gardens, the growers and hybridizers 

 of flowers who draw through that warp their 

 threads of form and color. As I returned from 

 the exhibition last summer of the American Gladio- 

 lus Society, I thought of what those growers and 

 hybridizers are doing for the joy of their country. 

 The lovely wares they deal in — 



"I often wonder what the Vintners buy. 



One half so precious as the stuff they sell" 

 127 



