CULTURE OF FLOWERS. 
225 
ours, which God has made, but has some beauty blended with 
it. Shall mortals then separate, hold fast the one and cast 
aside the other? The whole economy of nature might be 
planned by the utilitarian, and carried on, homely and una¬ 
dorned, but for man’s delight and elevation, Omniscience hath 
the useful beautified. There is no gift of our kind Father 
more readily or richly laden with the wealth of association. 
Let me but see or hear the name of certain flowers, familiar 
in the sunny clime of my childhood’s beautiful home, and an 
electric chord is struck which vibrates through my whole being; 
the soul thrills u T ith blessed memories, and the swelling heart 
presses sweetest tears to the eyelid’s brim. Days, years and 
changes are as nought; back again with the times and things 
that were, a flowerless, stove-warmed room is even in fancy 
redolent with past odors, some once loved fragrance, which, in 
this colder clime, I may have rarely breathed. 
The riches of a whole past are revealed by one breath of 
wafted fragrance. The teachings and precepts of those w T e 
loved and lost, come to us season after season in the fairy 
flower cups, fresh and distinct as when by littles here and there, 
line by line, they were instilled in the youthful mind. 
Most intimately connected are flowers with the joys and 
sorrows of life. They mingle with home, social and public 
special occasions, and lend their sweet power to soothe or 
enliven, as the scene be sad or gay. Ah, how tenderly and 
thrillingly ever afterward are they connected with the “ other 
days*’ of memory, which we love to “summon up” 
“To tlie sessions of sweet, silent thought.” 
Year after year fondly we fancy old time tales rung out by the 
drooping flower bells on their waving stems. Romances and 
histories are written on the fair, the glowing or blushing petals 
which only they who have the key may read. Memories are 
awakened by opening buds. The falling and closing flowers, 
which seem to tell a requiem for crushed hopes, open old 
wounds but to pour the sweetest balm upon the tender heart. 
Thev assure us that our best and truest joys cannot die, tho’ 
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