dahlia, the gladiolus and the peony. There are folks who will
have salvia and petunias, and I know a man who has set out poppies in
his front yard with unvarying resolution--oh, for many years. He knows
just how to set them out, and abandonment is over for that place with
the first hard frost in the Fall. There is one good thing about poppies.
They do not lie to you. They are frankly bad--the single ones, dry and
thin with their savage burning, their breath from some deep-concealed
place of decay. The double poppies are more dreadful--born of evil
thoughts, blackness blent with their reds. Petunias try to appear
innocent, but the eye that regards them as the conclusion in decorative
effect, has very far to come. Every man has the flower that fits him,
and very often it is the badge of his place in human society.

"The morning-glory is sweeter natured and somewhat finer in colour than
the petunia, but very greedy still. It does not appreciate good care.
Plant it in rose soil and it will pour itself out in lush madness that
forgets to bloom--like a servant that one spoils by treating as a human.
Each flower tells its story as does a human face. One needs only to see
deeply enough. The expression of inner fineness makes for beauty."

Which remarks were accepted without comment.

"Again," the old man added, "some of the accepted things are not so far
along in beauty. Tulips are supposed to be such rejoicers. I can't see
it They are little circles, a bit unpleasant and conceited. If one were
to explain on paper what a flower is like, to a man who had never seen
anything but trees, he would draw a tulip. They are unevolved. There is
raw green in the tulip yellows; the reds are like a fresh wound, and the
whites are either leaden or clayey.... Violets are almost spiritual in
their enticements. They have colour, texture, form, habit, and an
exhalation that is like a love-potion--earthy things that ask so little,
do so well apart and low among the shadows. They have come far like the
bees and the martins. Lilacs are old in soul, too, and their fragrance
is loved untellably by many mystics, though the green of their foliage
is questionable. Nothing that is old within is complacent. Complacency
goes with little orbits in men and all creatures."

"Cats are complacent," said the Abbot.

"Nasturtiums are really wonderful the more one lives with them," the
voice of the Chapel went on. "They are not so old, but very pure. Their
odo