it is they who linger in
sorrow over our graves.

Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our
companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above the brute.
Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon show his teeth.
It has been said that a man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at
thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he
becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal. Nothing
is real to us but hunger, nothing sacred except our own desires. Shrine
after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; but one altar is forever
preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,--ourselves.
Our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order
to make sacrifice to him. We boast that we have conquered Matter and
forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us. What atrocities do we not
perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement!

Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the
garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the
sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits you? Dream on,
sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. To-morrow
a ruthless hand will close around your throats. You will be wrenched,
torn asunder limb by limb, and borne away from your quiet homes. The
wretch, she may be passing fair. She may say how lovely you are while
her fingers are still moist with your blood. Tell me, will this be
kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom
you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the buttonhole of one who
would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be
your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water
to quench the maddening thirst that warns of ebbing life.

Flowers, if you were in the land of the Mikado, you might some time
meet a dread personage armed with scissors and a tiny saw. He would call
himself a Master of Flowers. He would claim the rights of a doctor and
you would instinctively hate him, for you know a doctor always seeks to
prolong the troubles of his victims. He would cut, bend, and twist
you into those impossible positions which he thinks it proper that you
should assume. He would contort your muscles and dislocate your bones
like any osteopath. He would burn you with red-hot coals to stop your
bleeding, and thrust wires into you to assist yo