Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/133

Rh “the Innermost!” and I will convey her image across the sea to my “Innermost.”

That inner light! That life of the inner light! I thank the city of the Friends for a new revelation of this. The next time I write to you will be from the sea-side in New Jersey. On Thursday we go to Cape May. But before that I shall make an excursion into the country, to the house of a lady, a friend of Mr. Downing, an American Madame de Sevigné.

 LETTER XX. last Saturday and Sunday at a beautiful country-seat near Philadelphia, among beautiful, rare flowers, priucipally Mexican, with their splendid fiery colouring, and flocks of humming-birds, which fluttered amongst them, dipping their delicate, long bills into the flower-cups. A real feast it was, of lovely natural objects out of doors; and within doors, everything ornamented, rich, beautiful, aristocratic, but too exclusive, at least for my taste, and with too little in it of really “high life.”

I write to you to-day from the sea-side, with the great free ocean heaving up towards the sands opposite my window, and just before me, in the midst of the waves, a scene of the most democratic-republican character. But I must, however, tell you something about my visit to the beautiful villa, because I was there present at the marriage-feast of the maize, and saw the wedding-dress, and I must tell you something about it.

The maize is of the class diœcia. The male flower developes itself in a spiked head which is placed aloft on the top of the strong green plant, somewhat like the sea-reed with us, only much thicker in stem and in leaf. This