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Why, no other than Jack-in-the-pulpit, who gives a talk every spring to all the woodland dwellers on just how to bloom and how to buzz and when to do it.
Here Oberon and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda. Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in this age of reason, the mystery of nature wove its magic round the curious mind of man,
"Dicky always says that when the Jack-in-the-Pulpit stops preaching he jumps on the back of a frog and takes a nasturtium leaf for a shield and hops forth to look for adventures," said Roger, to whom Dicky confided many of his ideas when they were working together in the garden. "Dicky is just right," laughed Helen. "That is a 'shield-shaped' leaf." "Do the tips of the leaves have names?" "Yes.
Well, the poor old gentleman rabbit looked for a place to hide himself away from the wolf but he couldn't seem to find any, and he was just going to crawl under a stone and maybe hurt himself, when all at once he heard a voice say: "Jump up here, Uncle Wiggily. I'll hide you from the wolf." So the rabbit traveler looked up, and there he saw a flower called Jack-in-the-pulpit looking down on him.
But we find no rarities to-day only solomon's seal, trillium, wild ginger, cranebill, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild columbine. Poison ivy is on every hand, in these tangled woods, with ferns of many varieties chiefly maidenhair, walking leaf, and bladder.
Occasionally, however, as in the cypripedium and in certain of the arums, or "jack-in-the-pulpit," and aristolochias, the welcome becomes somewhat aggressive, the guest being forcibly detained awhile after tea, or, as in the case of our milkweed, occasionally entrapped for life. From this companionable point of view let us now look again at the strange curved stamen of the sage.
Before them in a sort of hollow, were scores of big plants, shaped somewhat like a Jack-in-the-pulpit, or a big lily, with a curved top or flap to it. The plants were about eight feet tall, three feet across the top, and the flap or covering was raised about two feet. They were nodding and swaying in the wind on their short stems. "He's headed right for one of them!" Mr. Henderson exclaimed.
"And where are you, so that I may save you?" "Here I am, right down by your foot!" was the answer. "I am a honey bee, and I have fallen into this Jack-in-the pulpit flower, which is full of water. Please get me out!" "To be sure I will!" cried Mr. Longears, and then, stooping down he carefully lifted the poor bee out of the water in the Jack-in-the-pulpit.
"That certainly is bad trouble. I wonder if I cannot help?" The bunny uncle looked all around and down on the ground he saw a flat stone. Underneath it something green and brown was peeping out. "Was that you who called?" asked Mr. Longears. "It was," came the answer. "I am a Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant, you see, and I started to grow up, as all plants and flowers do when summer comes.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit, he has woefully forsaken the manners of the 'cloth, and insists upon retaining his ancient title of Knight of the Brush; the Duchess of Sweet Marjoram alone continues circumspect in walk and mien, for blood will tell, and she is more Noble than the others.
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