But now man does not read the book of Nature to much better purpose than he reads those other volumes, written by himself, and bought by himself, in bulk, to adorn his libraries: portly tomes to which he may point with pride as evidence that at least his shelves hold wisdom, tho’ his head may never.
I use no figure of speech when I say that we may now buy our books in bulk. I saw, only this morning, the advertisement of a large dry goods “emporium” (’tis laces and literature now) wherein is announced for sale the bound volumes of a popular magazine. “Over eight pounds of the choicest reading, bound in the usual style—olive green.” ❧
Nature has olive greens, too, in styles usual and unusual, and she has marvelous messages for her lovers, but she cannot be bought in bulk, nor put upon shelves, nor even carried in the head until she first be received into the heart ❧ A little flaxen haired girl brought me, this morning, a pure white buttercup on the stem with three yellow ones.
“See,” she said, “Here is one buttercup they forgot to paint.” ❧
I took the flower from her hand. I could not tell her just how it happened that this one perianth was white, but I explained to her something of how the others came to be yellow ☙ What we call a flower is not, usually, the flower at all, but merely its petals. The real flower is the cluster, in the center of the calyx, of pistils and their surrounding pollen-bearing stamens. Away back in the ages when man had not yet developed his æsthetic sense, perhaps even before he had learned to make fire, the primitive flower bore only these pistils and stamens, with a little outer protective whorl of green petals. It was fertilized by the pollen falling upon the pistils.
