10 
Rustic Adornments. 
or a single flower;—a rose, a pink, nay, a daisy. Bring a few daisies and 
buttercups from your last field walk, and keep them alive in water; and 
preserve but a bunch of clover, or a handful of flowering grass—one of the 
most elegant as well as cheap of nature’s productions—and you have some¬ 
thing on your table that reminds you of the beauty of God’s creation, and 
gives you a link with the poets and sages that have done it most honour. 
Put but a rose, or a lily, or a violet on your table, and you and Lord Bacon 
have a custom in common ; for that great and wise man was in the habit of 
having the flowers in season set upon his table—morning, and, we believe, 
noon, and night; that is to say, at 
all his meals ; for dinner, in his time, 
was taken at noon ; and why should 
he not have flowers at all his meals, 
seeing that they were growing all 
day ? Now, here is a fashion that 
shall last you for ever, if you please ; 
never changing with silks and 
velvets, nor dependent upon the 
caprice of some fine gentleman or 
lady. The fashion of the garments 
of heaven and earth endures for 
ever, and you may adorn your table 
with specimens of their drapery— 
with flowers out of the fields, and 
golden beams out of the blue ether." 
It would be folly to assume that 
our readers need any persuasion to 
adopt the practice of adorning the inside of the house with flowers; for who 
does not rejoice in a bright bouquet, or a vase of newly-gathered roses, or a 
window screened with fresh foliage and pyramids of bloom ? Children delight to 
make posies for mamma, lovers tremblingly present blushing roses to blushing 
maids, and dimpled cheeks outshine the flowers because the flowers have 
foolishly competed with them. The serious master of the house bethinks 
him of the home demands as he hurries about the city, and the consequence 
is that flower-stands come home in the carrier's cart, and all are impatient to see 
them filled with their glorious burden. And the good old soul who gets 
ready that same carrier’s breakfast, ere he sallies out into the hot dusty road, 
