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It must have seemed so to Greece when the Acropolis was to the outlying world what the imperial calla is to the marsh in which it lifts its superb flower. It must have seemed so to Rome when its solid roads of stone ran to all parts of a tributary world the highways of the legions, her ministers, and of the wealth that poured into her treasury.
Take roses and geraniums and callas, none of which are epochal because they are always at hand. But with old Mrs. Deacon Rogers in Connecticut who nursed her calla through the long winter that she might take it to church on Easter Sunday, the calla was history. Even the camellia San Franciscans take very philosophically. It has not, for instance, the supremacy that Dumas gives it in "Camille."
Miss Coleman's features were irregular, her nose prominent, her forehead too high; but she had a fair, pure complexion and fine eyes, and somehow reminded me of the calla lilly that Ma was always fussing about in our sitting room. And she was good and wise. I have often thought how different my life might have been if her orbit had not briefly threaded mine.
It was in a hopelessly unfashionable part of the city now; its old, dignified neighbors French and Spanish houses of plaster and brick, with deep gardens where willow and pepper trees, and fuchsias, and great clumps of calla lilies had once flourished were all gone, replaced by modern apartment houses.
According to the romance of Zamora, she, Doña Urraca, worried her father's last moments by trying to wheedle more than Zamora out of him; but the king was firm, adding only the following curse: "'Quien os la tomara, hija, ¡La mi maldición le caiga! Todos dicen amén, amén, Sino Don Sancho que calla."
"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty reassuringly; but instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I want you to tell me about my mother everything. I remember her just once, the night before they took her to the asylum.
"April, 1881. The waste of flowers on Easter Sunday distressed me. Something is due to the flowers themselves. They are massed together like a bushel of corn, and look like red and white sugar-plums as seen in a confectioner's window. "A pillow of flowers is a monstrosity. A calla lily in a vase is a beautiful creation; so is a single rose.
"I'm glad." "You're not angry Calla Lilly?" "Of course not." "How soon again?" "No." "Yes, yes!" "No." And somehow the word was like a plummet deep into the years ahead.
But Maya fled not from herself: the winds wailed like the crying of despair in her harp-voiced pines; the shining oak-leaves rustled hisses upon her unstrung ear; the timid forest-creatures, who own no rule but patient love and caresses, hid from her defiant step and dazzling eye; and when she knew herself in no wise healed by the ministries of Nature, in the very apathy of desperation she flung herself by the clear fountain that had already fallen upon her lips and cooled them with bitter water, and hiding her head under the broad, fresh leaves of a calla that bent its marble cups above her knitted brow and loosened hair, she lay in deathlike trance, till the Fairy Anima swept her feet with fringed garments, and cast the serpent wand writhing and glittering upon her breast.
These appearances were certain indications that there had been ships at this place but a short time before we came there; and as all Spanish merchantmen are instructed to avoid the island on account of its being the common rendezvous of their enemies, we concluded those who had touched here to be ships of force; and not knowingthat Pizarro was returned to Buenos Ayres, and ignorant what strength might have been fitted out at Calla, we were under some concern for our safety, being in so wretched and enfeebled a condition that, notwithstanding the rank of our ship and the sixty guns she carried on board, which would only have aggravated our dishonour, there was scarcely a privateer sent to sea that was not an overmatch for us.
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