22S 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
Ah, I already must bless you. 
Priest, in your surplice of white;' 
Grand is your unspoken sermon. 
Written in letters of light. 
Nearer to sorrow than gladness, 
Peace plants her banner of calm; 
Up from the wine-press of suffering 
Riseth the conqueror's palm ! 
Grief, through the depths of thy shadow 
Though my dim pathway may lie, 
Yet can I sing if beyond thee, 
My soul stands white by-and-by ! 
***** 
“Now, mamma, pleaso do tell me— 
Why do you stop to think ? 
Which do you think is nicest— 
The blue, or white, or pink?” 
Last of the three perfect flowers, 
Highest and sweetest thy speech; 
Joy may her rose-tinted signal 
Raise far above my hand’s reach. 
And with lips where a smile is trembling, 
Though my eyes with tears are bright, 
I whisper, “ Well my darling, 
I ihink —yes, I’m sure —the white!” 
—[Rebecca Parley Reed . 
MID-SUMMER AND ITS FLORA. 
The hands upon the dial-face of the clock of Nature 
stand pointing at twelve; it is noon of the year. You 
know it by the stillness of the warm summer days, by 
the deep blueness of the skies, by the fullness and green¬ 
ness of vegetation, the rich culmination of the foliage, 
which is all ready to ripen into decay, although there 
is not one dead leaf or drooping twig to be seen as yet. 
Not a leaf shows even a yellow tinge, and they dance 
and play in the soft zephyr, as though conscious that 
they had reached the fullness of their beauty. The 
broad meadows, still green, are like great seas, the 
blossoming grass moving in billows at every breath of 
the breeze. 
What days are these, when the whole world of Nature 
seems to be waiting as if loath to enter upon its new 
form of growth, its time of ripening—waiting for the 
full fruit! Now, if ever, do we have days of complete 
beauty. All of us can recall some of these perfect 
days—they throng all along the route from the fifteenth 
of June to the last of August—days when Heaven 
seems to be upon, earth, and the golden age comes 
again, so bright is the sunshine, so delicious the breeze, 
so musical the air with insect sounds, so gorgeous the 
flowers that are springing from Flora’s basket. I have 
always had a fancy that the classic Golden Age must 
have been always a sort of mid-summer, and that our 
brief season was kindly given us as a reminder of that 
happy period, long ago lost to fallen mankind. Cer¬ 
tainly it is a time for rejoicing, and what glad surprises 
there are for us each successive week, especially in the 
blossoms and flowers, for we are surprised every 
hour. 
You remember the first days of spring, when the 
plants and grasses awoke from their long winter sleep, 
how the very earth seemed to throb with life. There 
were Anemones and Crocusses and Violets, and the 
Arbutus and the Saxifrage, and a multitude of wild 
flowers, so profuse that you thought nothing could sur¬ 
pass the show. But how much grander is the exhibi¬ 
tion of midsummer’s bloom. July and August have a 
myriad of flowers. We cannot write nor read of half 
of them; and they are showy, too—queens in their way, 
each one seeming to call for special notice, and making 
us want to cry out, “Ah, was there ever anything so 
beautiful ? ” 
The Rose, celebrated in Eastern story, and suggestive 
of Lalla Rookh, as well as of the rural graces of the 
maids of Lorraine, who gave to Queen Maria Antoinette 
a bed of Rose leaves, as she passed through Nancy, on 
her way to France, is in bloom during the first of mid¬ 
summer. It is a right royal flower. Even our little 
modest wild Rose is a beautiful rustic queen. Who can 
say whether the white Rose or the red, the budding or 
the full blown, has been most celebrated. Oft, indeed, 
have all been sung; and the Rose-bud, from its grace 
and gradually maturing beauty, has not been inappro¬ 
priately made emblematic of a young girl. 
There are many species, the family embracing plants 
with regular flowers, numerous distinct stamens in¬ 
serted on the calyx, and one or many pistils, quite dis¬ 
tinct, or united and combined with the calyx tube- 
Famous among the numerous kinds is the Rose tie la 
Malmaison, propagated by the Empress Josephine, and 
carrying with it memories of that graceful and noble 
woman of the first Empire. 
There is the Morning Glory, beloved of our child¬ 
hood, and almost the only flower that was willing to 
come up from the seeds we planted and dug over. The 
picture comes back to me, as I write, of the clambering, 
plant that canopied my mother’s kitchen door, and the 
beautiful show it made in the July and August mornings, 
with its funnel-shaped flowers that opened at the 
dawn and closed again before night. White, red, pur¬ 
ple, variegated flowers, nestling like tropical birds 
among the thick, green leaves, and perhaps a humming¬ 
bird, darting in and out, or a golden bumble-bee hid in 
the cup of the blossom. Was there ever anything 
prettier than these ? Perhaps it is the halo of romance,, 
the exaggerated color that clings to all youthful scenes, 
that gives us this delight, but the flower has beauty, 
too. We are glad to see it becoming fashionable 
again. 
In the hedges one will find the Clethra, of the bril¬ 
liant Heath family. It inherits little of the rich color 
of its tribe, but it has all its beauty. Its white flowers, 
“terminal racemes,” that is, flowers clustering along a 
