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 we owe, not only a chrysanthemum bed, but nearly all exquisite flower-beds, our more varied, more delicious vegetables and fruits. What a surprising advance of the chrysanthemum from being a mere weed; and what a wonder of a evolution!

Maeterlinck says: “It is among familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most tractable and the most attentive plant of all that we meet on life’s long way. It bears flowers impregnated through and through with the thoughts and will of man; flowers already human, so to speak, and, if the vegetable world is some day to reveal to us one of the worlds that we are awaiting, perhaps it will be through this flower that we shall learn the first secret of existence, even as, in another kingdom, it is probably through the dog, the almost thinking guardian of our homes, that we shall discover the mystery of animal life.”

After all, it may not be altogether ridiculous to fancy the day will come when the chrysanthemums will speak to you and me of the secret and beauty of their flower kingdom. And this ghostly world and life are really mysterious. Rh