THE NOVELTIES. 



343 



sessed no salient points of merit upon which to hang the 

 slightest shred of enthusiasm, and he soon abandoned 

 them. 



At that remote period he had just entered, a buoyant 

 but unsophisticated neophyte, into the broad realm of 

 floriculture, and his initial exploits therein were carried 

 on with the same unflagging zest and enjoyment, which 

 he still derives from ' ' digging in the dirt, " notwithstand- 

 ing the many occasions on which the practical outcome 

 of divers promising theories proves that hope often 

 hovers on the border-land of illusion. When in the 

 happy chrysalis condition of youthful amateur, he then, 

 as now, dabbled extensively in experiments, and the 

 certainty that he had found his true vocation was evident 

 in the fact that the leading catalogues then in vogue 

 swayed him with the same subtle, irresistible power that 

 their florid successors of the present day still maintain. 

 Inspired by their persuasive eloquence (and the mini- 

 mum price of the packets, five cents, which was an eco- 

 nomical consideration not to be overlooked in those 

 pioneer days), he first became practically acquainted 

 with those peerless flowers, abronia, argemone, bartonia, 

 calendrina, carduus (or was it simply cardus ?), crepis, 

 bachelor's button, collinsia, datura, godetia, nemophila, 

 leptosiphon, linum, malope, saponaria, silene, podolepis, 

 whitlavia, zea, etc. Yet, notwithstanding the influence 

 of the potent charm of novelty and the optimistic ardor of 

 youth, the effect of the combined loveliness of this rare 

 collection was not sufficiently powerful to chain his 

 allegiance to the proteges of the blithesome catalogues 

 for more than a couple of seasons or so, and in his gar- 

 den to-day, this galaxy of beauty is conspicuous from its 

 absence. 



In making his selections — that occupation so full of 

 charm — he was often more moved by the classical eu- 

 phony of the names than by the fervor of the descrip- 

 tions ; for who could resist, for instance, names so re- 

 plete with rhythmic melody as calendula, calendrina, 

 cedronella, nemophila, etc. ? though to be sure, he was 

 disenchanted to discover that Centanrea cyamts was an 

 old acquaintance, and that malope, datura and saponaria 

 grew in sturdy independence all along the roadside, 

 while his grandmother had, from time immemorial, de- 

 voted a patch in the paternal garden to carthamus, but 

 the matter-of-fact old lady, in her primitive way, had 

 always called it saffron. 



In spite of all this, however, he rejoices that the con- 

 servative seedsmen still retain all these old flowers, 

 weedy and commonplace though they be, for they may 

 be termed the alphabet of floriculture, the rudimentary 

 elements, and serve a purpose as progressive steps, by 

 which the youthful amateur is gradually conducted, and 

 later on, is initiated into the more intricate methods of 

 cultivating flowers of superior merit. 



The flood-gate of memory lets in such a rush of rem- 

 iniscences that the writer is in danger of wandering com- 

 pletely away from the subject proper, which at <he out- 

 set was pentstemons. As he has said, the pentstemons of 

 earlier days were eminently mediocre in quality ; hence. 



when four years ago, in looking over Victor I-emoine's 

 catalogue his attention was arrested by the heading, 

 ' ■ Pentstemons, Collection d ' elite," he was profoundly sur- 

 prised ; and in the light of his previous experience he 

 mentally observed, " surely there must have occurred a 

 wonderful revolution in pentstemons if the high-flown 

 phrase ' Collection d' elite' can be truthfully applied to 

 them. " 



Lemoine occupies a foremost place in French horti- 

 culture, and has scored many triumphs in originating 

 and in improving flowers in various species. His only 

 weak point is the habit of occasionally bestowing odious 

 radical names on the lovely productions of his profes- 

 sional skill. Among instances of this we find that " old 

 original Jacobs" of the spirit of revolt, Lucifer; also 

 his worthy disciple, Voltaire, the cynical old sophist ; 

 Renan, the Utopian sentimentalist ; Jean Jacques Rous- 

 seau, whose " confessions " alone would infallibly con- 

 demn him to the stocks in any self-respecting commun- 

 ity, and the hollowness of whose gushing love for 

 humanity was revealed by heartlessly consigning his 

 own offspring to the foundling asylum. If any specialist 

 should happen to originate an especially ugly and rank 

 smelling specimen of chenopodium, otherwise known as 

 ' ' pig-weed, " let him call it Jean Jacques Rousseau ; then 

 flower lovers, the general public and everybody else 

 would receive their due — with the exception, perhaps, 

 of the unfortunate pig-weed. 



Those modern apostles of minutely analyzed nastiness 

 too, are honored. Richepin, Catulle-Mendes, Bourget, 

 Maupassant and others, though, thank goodness, he has 

 not as yet, in selecting names, reached that lower type 

 of literary degradation, the ignoble Zola. After the 

 fashionable Tolstoi and Ibsen fads, we are now threat- 

 ened with a Maupassant craze ; but this graceful author 

 is not to be judged by deodorized translations; in the 

 original he is often painfully crude, and all the more 

 dangerous from being a writer of power and felicity. 



As regards translations, a writer in a recent issue of 

 one of the leading magazines gives us a graphic glimpse 

 of the manner in which this literary ' ' poudrette " is pre- 

 pared for the American market. Speaking of a lady 

 principally known by her able adaptations from the 

 French, he says : " As an adapter she stands with the 

 first, for she can take the central idea of an extremely 

 risque story, and so filter, embroider and transpose, that 

 without injury to the creator's individuality, she makes 

 a piece of work irreproachable for magazine use," 



Manipulating "extremely risque ' stories from the 

 French naturally strikes us as a rather delicate occupa- 

 tion for a lady ; that is to say, delicate on the very rare 

 occasions in which it would not be a highly indelicate 

 occupation, and one eminently fitted to rob the feminine 

 peach of its womanly bloom. The conclusion to be 

 drawn from this candid extract amounts, in other words, 

 to this: "Slush from French sewers, when adroitly 

 passed through a complicated and ingenious American 

 filter, becomes a very refreshing beverage, highly satis- 

 factory to the most critical American palate." 



