ghingly fly kites, and little boys look gravely on, where
white is mourning, and everything is different from elsewhere--there
yellow is the most admired of colors, restricted to the use of royalty
alone under penalty of death.

Yellow is the most searching of colors, as indeed it should be from its
correspondence with light. It is gaudy, and does not inspire respect,
for it brings into view every imperfection. Every defect in form or
manner is rendered conspicuous by it, and we involuntarily scan the
whole person of the unfortunate and tasteless wearer of it.

BLUE.

In early art, represented truth, honor, and fidelity, and even at this
day we associate blue and truthfulness. Christ and the Virgin were
formerly painted with blue mantles, and blue is especially recognized as
the Virgin's color. We can never turn our eyes upward without seeing
truth's emblematical color. How appropriate that the heavens should be
blue! Of truthfulness and faithfulness it should be our constant
reminder.

Primary blue enters as a compound into three other colors of the
spectrum: green, indigo, and violet. As a primary color, it is much more
rarely seen in nature than either red or yellow. We have few blue birds,
few blue flowers, few blue fruits. As one of a compound, it is oftener
found than red. The grass, the leaves, everywhere proclaim the marriage
of good, as yellow anciently represented, and truth, as blue symbolized.
There is a deep significance in the change that has come over mankind's
view of the meaning of the first of these colors. With the loss of
faith, the tearing apart of truth and goodness, has come a change of
correspondence. Men have everywhere turned away from the light, though
still professing to strive for truth.

Each color possesses a character of its own, which proclaims to the
close observer the peculiar qualities of that to which it belongs. The
horticulturist reads the peculiarities of the fruit as readily by its
color as the phrenologist reads his by his 'bumps.' The red one, he will
tell you, is sour, the white one sweet, the pale one flat, and the green
one alkaline; that one is a good table apple, this one a superior cider
apple; and if you further ask the characteristics of a good cider apple,
he will tell you again it is known by its color, not only of the skin,
but also of the pulp, and that it can be foretold whether cider will be
weak, thin, and colorless, or possess strength, or richness, or co