FLOWERS OF THOUGHT. 
75 
duction can ever forget the pleasing confusion it 
makes amongst the lovers in the wood! 
It was in those days—age of happy dreams! 
—when armed knights rode forth in quest of ad¬ 
ventures, combated with mighty giants, and de¬ 
stroyed enchanted castles by one blast of their loud 
bugle-horns—battled with dragons, and met with 
beautiful and disconsolate maidens at the foot of 
almost every grey and weather-beaten cross, wher¬ 
ever three lonely roads met together,— when the 
cave of Merlin was visited by all who had courage 
enough to look into the future, and King Arthur’s 
Round Table was never without a gallant guest,— 
it was then that they began to seek for signs, and 
spells, and charms, and tokens, and all the awful 
mysteries of divination, in the secret virtues of the 
flowers. But most of all to the petals of the 
Pansy did they turn their thoughts, and in its 
freaked flowers seek to learn their destiny. If the 
petal they plucked was pencilled with four lines, 
it signified hope; if from the centre line started a 
branch, when the streaks numbered five, it was still 
hope, springing out of fear; and when the lines 
were thickly branched, and leaned towards the left, 
they foretold a life of trouble; but if they bent 
towards the right, they were then supposed to 
denote prosperity unto the end : seven streaks they 
interpreted into .constancy in love, and if the centre 
