The Land of the Blue Flower | Page 9

things came to pass. Those who had wasted their days loitering or rioting were obliged to get up in the morning to work in their gardens, and finding that exercise and fresh air improved their health and spirits they began to like it. Court ladies found it good for their complexions and tempers; busy merchants discovered that it made their heads clearer; ambitious students found that after an hour spent evening and morning over their Blue Flower beds they could study twice as long without fatigue. The children of the princes and nobles became so full of work and talk of their soil and their seeds that they quite forgot to squabble and be jealous of each other's importance at Court. Never in one story could it be told how many unusual, interesting, and wonderful things occurred in the once gloomy King Mordreth's Land just because every person in it, rich and poor, old and young, good and bad, had to plant and care for and live every day of life with a Blue Flower. Oh! the corners and crannies and queer places it was planted in; and oh! the thrill of excitement everywhere when the first tender green shoots thrust their way through the earth! And the wave of excitement which passed over the whole land when the first buds showed themselves. By that time every one was so interested that even the Afraid Ones had forgotten to ask each other what King Amor would do to them if they had no Blue Flower. Somehow, people had gained courage and they knew the Blue Flower would grow--and they knew there was no time to stop working while they worried and said "Suppose it didn't." There was no time.
Sometimes the young King was on the mountain top with the wind and the eagle and the stars, and sometimes he was in his palace in the city, but he was always working and thinking for his people. He was not seen by the people, however, until a splendid summer day came when it was proclaimed by heralds in the streets that he would begin his journey through the land by riding through the capital city to see the blossoming of the Blue Flowers, and there would be a feast once more upon the plain.
It was a wonderful day, the air was full of golden light and the sky of such a blueness as never had been seen before. Out of the palace gates he rode and he wore his crown, and his eyes were more brilliant than the jewels in it, and his smile was more radiant than a sunrise as he looked about him, for every breath he drew in was fragrant, every ugly place was hidden, and every squalid corner filled with beauty, for it seemed as if the whole world were waving with Blue Flowers. Tumble-down houses and fences were covered with them because some of them climbed like vines; neglected fields and gardens had been made neat so that they would grow; rubbish and dirt had been cleaned away to make room for clumps and patches of them. You could not grow the Blue Flower among dirt and disorder any more than you could grow it while you were spending your time in drinking and quarreling. By the road sides, in courts, in windows, in cracks, in walls, in broken places in roofs, in great people's gardens, on the window sills, or about the doorways of poor people's hovels--fair and fragrant and waving, grew the Blue Flower. Where it waved there was no room for dirt and rubbish, and suddenly even the dullest people began to see that the face of the whole land was changed as if by some strange magic, and the whole population seemed changed with it. Everybody looked fresher and more cheerful, people had actually learned to smile and keep themselves clean, and there was not one who was not healthier. They had, in fact, been noticing this for some time, and they had said to each other that the power of the Blue Flower, of which the King had spoken, was beginning to work. The children had grown gay and rosy, and the boy who was clever and all his companions had found time to earn themselves new clothes, because they had never forgotten their passwords. All the farmers wanted them to work in their fields because they said there was no time to idle, no time to fight, no time to play evil tricks.
On the King rode, and on and on and on, and the farther he went the more splendid and joyous his smile grew.
But at no time during the day was it more beautiful than when he met the little cripple who had sat on the outside of the