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It had a tiny brick strip of yard in front, on which was set, on either side of the stoop, a great century-plant in a pot. Above them rose a curving flight of steps to a broad veranda, supported with Corinthian pillars, which were now upright and glistening with white paint, as was the entire house. "They had it all fixed up, inside and out," said Aunt Maria.
"No, I don't." Richard burst out laughing. "Imagine him," he cried, "imagine Methuselah in his eight or nine hundredth year, dressed in his customary bridal suit, with a sprig of century-plant stuck in his button-hole!" "Richard," said Margaret solemnly, "you shouldn't speak jestingly of a scriptural character." At this Richard broke out again.
You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc, the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice has left no distinct echo in your remembrance, and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a dream.
It rose straight up, up, up, generation after generation, tall, branchless, slender, palm-like; and finally, in the time of which I am to tell, flowered with all the rare beauty of a century-plant, in Artemise, Innocente, Felicité, the twins Marie and Martha, Leontine and little Septima; the seven beautiful daughters for whom their home had been fitly named Belles Demoiselles.
III. I should n't dare add this third postscript if you were near enough to slay me with the lightning of your eye, but I simply wish to mention that a wise gardener chooses young, strong timber for poles, saplings, in fact! Mr. John Bird is too old for this purpose. Well seasoned he is, of course, and suitable as a prop for a century-plant, but not for a scarlet runner!
Then she said, "There's a big black cloud, and the sun is lost in it, and it's going to rain, and we aren't anywhere at all yet!" They had got down to level ground by this time and were walking through a great field of maguey plants. The maguey is a strange great century-plant that grows higher than a man's head.
In the front yard are young orange, olive and fig trees, with two splendid oleanders fifteen feet high, one on each side the door. Another tropical plant, seen at the North in greenhouses, but here growing ten feet high in the open air, is the American aloe or century-plant. This house will accommodate twenty-five boarders, but it was not full at the time; so we obtained rooms.
It often flowers twice or thrice in that space of time, and ought to take away the reproach of the inhabitants for a want of industry and enterprise: a century-plant at least could do no more in any air, and it merits praise for its activity in the breath of these languorous seas.
Next to maize the chief culture among the Otomis is maguéy. This forms division lines between the corn-fields and the village yards, and is sometimes, though not commonly here, planted in fields. The maguéy is an agave very close to the century-plant. Manifold are its uses, but to the Otomi its value is chiefly in two directions. It furnishes ixtli fibre for ayates, and it yields pulque.
So, while we have been expecting the American Literature to come out from some locality, neat and clean, like a nugget, or, to change the figure, to bloom any day like a century-plant, in one striking, fragrant expression of American life, behold something else has been preparing and maturing, larger and more promising than our early anticipations.
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