Complete Essays | Page 5

are one or another variety of that flower which bears such a
sweet perfume in all literature; but can it make no difference in
character whether a young girl comes out into the garish world as a rose
or as a chrysanthemum? Is her life set to the note of display, of color
and show, with little sweetness, or to that retiring modesty which needs
a little encouragement before it fully reveals its beauty and its perfume?
If one were to pass his life in moving in a palace car from one plush
hotel to another, a bunch of chrysanthemums in his hand would seem to
be a good symbol of his life. There are aged people who can remember
that they used to choose various roses, as to their color, odor, and
degree of unfolding, to express the delicate shades of advancing
passion and of devotion. What can one do with this new favorite? Is not
a bunch of chrysanthemums a sort of take-it-or-leave-it declaration,
boldly and showily made, an offer without discrimination, a tender
without romance? A young man will catch the whole family with this
flaming message, but where is that sentiment that once set the maiden
heart in a flutter? Will she press a chrysanthemum, and keep it till the
faint perfume reminds her of the sweetest moment of her life?
Are we exaggerating this astonishing rise, development, and spread of
the chrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-
skirt, or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the

lovely head. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all
nations and times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has
held its own as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of
sentiment. But here comes a flaunting thing with no desirable perfume,
looking as if it were cut with scissors out of tissue-paper, but capable of
taking infinite varieties of color, and growing as big as a curtain tassel,
that literally captures the world, and spreads all over the globe, like the
Canada thistle. The florists have no eye for anything else, and the
biggest floral prizes are awarded for the production of its eccentricities.
Is the rage for this flower typical of this fast and flaring age?
The Drawer is not an enemy to the chrysanthemum, nor to the
sunflower, nor to any other gorgeous production of nature. But it has an
old- fashioned love for the modest and unobtrusive virtues, and an
abiding faith that they will win over the strained and strident displays
of life. There is the violet: all efforts of cultivation fail to make it as big
as the peony, and it would be no more dear to the heart if it were
quadrupled in size. We do, indeed, know that satisfying beauty and
refinement are apt to escape us when we strive too much and force
nature into extraordinary display, and we know how difficult it is to get
mere bigness and show without vulgarity. Cultivation has its limits.
After we have produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the
most precious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our
admiration put a limit to her size. There being, then, certain laws that
ultimately fetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable
that the chrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its
splendor; that fashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret
heart of love; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its
capacity of shyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty; the rose, with
that odor--of the first garden exhaled and yet kept down through all the
ages of sin --will become again the fashion, and be more passionately
admired for its temporary banishment. Perhaps the poet will then come
back again and sing. What poet could now sing of the "awful
chrysanthemum of dawn"?

THE RED BONNET
The Drawer has no wish to make Lent easier for anybody, or rather to
diminish the benefit of the penitential season. But in this period of

human anxiety and repentance it must be said that not enough account
is made of the moral responsibility of Things. The doctrine is sound;
the only difficulty is in applying it. It can, however, be illustrated by a
little story, which is here confided to the reader in the same trust in
which it was received. There was once a lady, sober in mind and sedate
in manner, whose plain dress exactly represented her desire to be
inconspicuous, to do good, to improve every day of her life in actions
that should benefit her kind. She was a serious person, inclined