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If you hate honey or cheese, or the products of the dairy, I know a family a good many of whose members can't touch milk, butter, cheese, and the like, why, say so, but don't find fault with the bees and the cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known those who thought a pond-lily a disagreeable neighbor. That Boy will give you the metaphysics of likes and dislikes.
Some assimilate none but good influences, and their emblem is the fragrant and spotless pond-lily, whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about. . . . Among the productions of the river's margin, I must not forget the pickerel-weed, which grows just on the edge of the water, and shoots up a long stalk crowned with a blue spire, from among large green leaves.
"Splendid, Rufus!" she commended. "You never did it half so well." "She never did," agreed a familiar voice from the other end of the room, and the sisters turned with a start. Richard advanced down the room, Mr. Kendrick following more slowly. "You look as cool as a pond-lily, love," said Richard, "in spite of this July weather." His approving eyes regarded Roberta's cheek at close range.
He honored certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily, then, the gentian, and the Mikania scondens, and "life-everlasting," and a bass-tree which he visited every year, when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the sight, more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses.
"Suppose she should leave her slippers kicking around over those white rugs, drop her kimono in the middle of that pond-lily bed, and er attach a mound of chewing-gum to the corner of the mirror," he propounded. "I should send her home." "No you could do better than that. Make her change rooms with the Philosopher. He wouldn't leave a speck the size of a molecule on all that whiteness."
When our children go to the fields in April and May, they can bring home no wild flowers as pleasing as the sweet English violet, and cowslip, and yellow daffodil, and wallflower; and when British children go to the woods at the same season, they can load their hands and baskets with nothing that compares with our trailing arbutus, or, later in the season, with our azaleas; and, when their boys go fishing or boating in summer, they can wreathe themselves with nothing that approaches our pond-lily.
In the pool of a fountain, of which there are several beautiful ones within the palace, besides larger ones in the garden before it, we saw tropical plants growing, large water-lilies of various colors, some white, like our Concord pond-lily, only larger, and more numerously leafed.
"Oh, isn't this sweet?" exclaimed Mrs. Harris, rapturously, approaching the table. "How the best work of Art pales before Nature!" It was only a tall small vase of ground glass, holding a pond-lily, fully opened. But it was perfect in its way, and I knew by the smile on Laura's lips that it was her gift. "Mine is in that corner, Delphine," said Mrs. Harris.
Thus all the glories of the blossoms have arisen in doing useful work; their beauty is not mere ornament, but the sign and token of duty well performed. Our opportunity to admire the radiancy and perfume of a jessamine or a pond-lily is due to the previous admiration of uncounted winged attendants.
In like manner one learns where to look for arbutus, for pipsissewa, for the early orchis; they have their particular haunts, and their surroundings are nearly always the same. The yellow pond-lily is found in every sluggish stream and pond, but NYMPHÆA ODORATA requires a nicer adjustment of conditions, and consequently is more restricted in its range.
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