re fit
exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of
the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground
and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood?

But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to
every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They
seem glad to start the nerves of human beings.

The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts
you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the
comfort warm within.

The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And
they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of
chaste praise.

These are flowers which _look_ their fragrance; but there are those that
startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner
spirit.

What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks
of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear
daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the
nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their
gushes of delicious breath.

The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It
is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to
do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here
would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon
verbena--which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it
deserves to be considered one--one can easily see why that is valued.
What a refined, _spirituelle_ smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it,
or Lady Jane Grey--or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might
have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells
of.

Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and
disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay
bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower--a yellowish,
toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and
for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's
expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within
those luckless mansions!

But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms?
Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak--as the infantile
anemones, daisies, and innocents.

Perhaps some are thus most meet for symbol