84 
House & Garden 
CYALE) 
You don’t need to take 
anybody’s word —the 
trade-mark “YALE” is 
on the genuine 
Getting what you ask for is a 
very simple thing where Yale 
Products are concerned. 
The trade-mark “Yale” is on every 
genuine “Yale” product. There is no 
chance to go wrong, no need to be 
guided by anybody’s sayso. You 
simply look for that trade-mark 
“Yale.” If you see it—it is “Yale.” 
If you don’t see it spelled “Y-A-L-E” 
—it isn’t a Yale product. 
So, when you go to buy 
a Yale cylinder night 
latch, or padlock, or door 
closer, or any kind of 
builders’ hardware—ask 
for it. Then look at it. 
See the trade-mark 
“Yale” on it—tend have 
it wrapped up. 
Your responsibility 
ends with that —our re¬ 
sponsibility to you con¬ 
tinues as long as that 
Yale product is in service. 
And the presence of that 
trade-mark "Yale” is our 
definite guarantee of 
your satisfaction in the 
quality you have bought 
and the service you will 
get. 
Yale Products for sale by 
Hardware Dealers 
The Yale & Towne 
Mfg. Co. 
9 E. 40th St., New York. 
Chicago Office: 
77 East Lake Street 
Canadian Yale & Towne, 
Limited, 
St. Catharines, Ont. 
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THE DEATH-LILY OF THE NILE 
W HEN the late Alexander Hamil¬ 
ton, direct lineal decendant of 
the Revolutionary lady-killer 
and duellist, Alexander 1st, was travel¬ 
ing in Egypt shortly before his death, he 
discharged a dragoman one day in a fit 
of anger, and the man went away mut¬ 
tering dire threats of vengeance in his 
bushy beard. The bluff old American 
laughed at the man’s ferocious scowl, and 
forgot the incident. 
About two weeks later when he 
reached Alexandria he found in his mail 
a small package postmarked Cairo. On 
opening it he found a box, and inside it, 
carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was a 
brown and withered bulb. Under the 
bulb lay a sheet of papyrus inscribed 
with such characters as we associate 
with the tombs of the Ptolemys or 
Cleopatra’s Needle. Not being convers¬ 
ant with the dead languages Mr. Ham¬ 
ilton was unable to read the papyrus, but 
he was a lover of flowers and he did not 
remember ever having seen a bulb quite 
like the one he found awaiting him at 
Cairo, so hard, so withered was it. 
He put the bulb carefully away, and 
when he reached London he induced a 
professor of Egyptology to translate the 
papyrus. It said: 
“If you would possess the identical 
blue lily of the Nile and behold the 
flower which wreathed the barge of Cleo¬ 
patra on her imperial journeys, plant 
this in your garden and when it blooms 
all the wisdom of Isis will be yours.” 
Mr. Hamilton was a very practical 
man and he paid little attention to the 
message on the scroll, but he did want to 
know if the flower imprisoned in the 
withered bulb like a mummy in its case 
was worth taking home and planting. 
The Lily’s Legend 
“This” said the professor, “is not the 
common blue lotus of to-day, if your 
friend speaks the truth, but the extinct 
azure blossom known to ancient Egypt 
as the death-lily of the Nile. It blooms 
at irregular intervals according to the 
meager details we can gather from the 
few—very few—tablets which refer to it, 
but when it blossomed the head of the 
house died. Strangely enough there are 
no pictures of it anywhere on the walls 
or inscribed on any of the tablets so far 
discovered. The Egyptians held it in 
superstitious awe, and when the lily 
blossomed, and the owner died, the bulb 
was always entombed with him. Would 
you care to sell this bulb?” 
The professor’s eyes sparkled with 
eagerness, his whole tense attitude ex¬ 
pressed interrogation; covetousness was 
written large upon his wrinkled face. 
But Mr. Hamilton was wealthy and 
flowers were his hobby. Not for an in¬ 
stant did he feel any superstitious fears 
regarding the penalty attached to the 
ownership of the lily. In fact he con¬ 
sidered it a mere fairy-tale gotten up by 
the professor to intimidate him into 
passing on the “loaded” bulb to some¬ 
body else. He received more than one 
offer from Egyptologists for the bulb 
before he left London, and each time 
he was approached the interview served 
only to strengthen his belief that he had 
a floral treasure. After these experiences 
nothing would have induced him to part 
with it, and he hastened his departure 
for home in order to plant it. 
The gardener at his country estate at 
Irvington-on-Hudson performed the 
ceremony under Mr. Hamilton’s watch¬ 
ful eye, and twice a day thereafter Mr. 
Hamilton visited the place where the 
bulb lay in the soft mold, watering the 
spot with his own hands and waiting 
impatiently for it to germinate. 
“I think it’s a dale too owld,” said 
the gardener, “to have any loife left in 
it”. But after Mr. Hamilton had given 
up hope, one morning a slender dagger 
of green shot up through the earth, soon 
followed by another and another until 
a cluster of elongated dark-green leaves 
luxuriantly unfolded. Roots, too, writhed 
out of the dirt, serpent-wise, coiling and 
twisting, but no flower-spike appeared 
that summer nor the next, to Mr. Ham¬ 
ilton’s intense disappointment. Once or 
twice he thought of the legend of the 
lily, but he put it from him as un¬ 
worthy of common sense, and ascribed 
the non-appearance of blossoms to the 
change in climatic conditions or to the 
fact that the bulb had been so long dry. 
“Or perhaps,” said Mr. Hamilton, "it 
may not bloom until it is just so old—■ 
something like the century plant.” But 
each autumn the bulb, now a bunch of 
tangled roots, vividly like a mass of 
dark, intertwined and squirming water- 
snakes, was lifted from the ground be¬ 
fore frost and carefully packed away in 
protecting layers of paper, and each 
spring it was again returned to the 
warm bosom of earth. Oddly enough 
no new bulbs appeared—just the same 
old bulb with the long sinuous roots 
shooting out of it. 
The First Blossom 
Then in August of the fourth summer 
the death-lily blossomed. From the 
center of the deep green leaves— on 
which no living insect or worm ever 
ventured—appeared a thick spike with 
a round knob at the top. For six weeks 
it shot upward, the knob becoming a 
ball, first pale green, then finally touched 
with delicate blue verging on lavender, 
and at last unfolding into a glorious ball 
of blossoms, perfectly round, and formed 
of countless lilies crowding closely to¬ 
gether to form a great fragrant globe of 
pale-blue, exquisite, waxy, and breath¬ 
ing a heavy sweetness almost over¬ 
powering. 
I say the flowers were pale blue, but 
they were not the ordinary azure of any 
other blue flower,—they might also be 
termed lilac, for the color was a delicate 
blending of the palest tints of both. 
Each individual lily was 2" in diameter, 
about 4'' long, with a clear green stem 
not exceeding an inch in length, and all 
springing from the central core in such 
symmetrical regularity that each flower 
fitted exactly to the next flower, neither 
overlapping nor falling short, thus form¬ 
ing the globe of flowers which was fully 
/z in circumference. The stem sup¬ 
porting this magnificent ball of blossoms 
was nearly 4' tall, strong, thick, smooth 
as jade and straight as a flagstaff. There 
was not a blemish on plant or blossoms 
—leaf, stem, and flower were alike per¬ 
fect, free from parasites, and shunned by 
every living thing. Despite the intoxi¬ 
cating fragrance exhaled by the cluster 
of lilies not a bee went near it, and 
hummingbirds, butterflies and all creep¬ 
ing, crawling, or flying things avoided 
it. It was like an orbed floral sceptre, 
towering above the modem blossoms in 
the garden, truly a royal flower radiat¬ 
ing the majesty and the deadly mystery 
of the East. 
The Second Fatal Flower 
Mr. Hamilton saw its glory but once. 
He died before the green leaves sprouted 
again. Some member of the family with 
a superstitious streak gave the root- 
swathed bulb the next spring to my 
father, who was also a great lover of 
flowers. Set out in a sunny spot in his 
garden it grew luxuriantly but refused 
to bloom until the third summer, when it 
again put forth the tall spike crowned 
with the ball, to my father’s great de¬ 
light. But he Was destined never to 
behold its glory. On the morning the 
lily blossomed for the second time in 
America my father lay dead and we cut 
the magnificent stalk of lilac-blue per¬ 
fection to lay upon his coffin. 
After his death we shut up the house 
and moved away. That fall I gave the 
root-bulb of the lily to a friend, a 
physician in Philadelphia, who scoffed 
at superstition and who was also a 
flower lover. It flowered the first year 
it was in his possession, but he too be¬ 
came a sacrifice. It opened about four 
o’clock of an August afternoon while he 
was visiting a patient in the suburbs. 
