Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1874-06-18
Ferns.

FERNS will grow where Towering plants
would perish. They require moisture
and shade-not stagnant but percolating
moisture. Place them where you will,
on the floor, on the table of dimly.
lighted room, in the sunless window-sill,
in shady ccrner-anywhere-and they
will grow and develop, unrolling their
charming fronds, and exhibiting their
sweet feathery forms with all their natu-
raj grace ia the presence of sqaalor and
misery. The poor seamstress painfully
working in yonder ill-lighted garrett
where the glorious sun never comes
might perhaps have shed bitter tears over
the withered flower that all her care had
failed to rear. But fern would grow
where her flower had died, and would
smile upon her with its mute, flowerless
smile, and would live in the dark light
of her attic window, and unfolding its
fronds day by day would assume it's
most majestic and graceful form even in
the presence of poor seamstress.
But it is not only the poor who have to
live in gardenless dwellings ami look out
from sunless windows The mansions of
the rich, and thousands of houses of the
well-to-do and of the middle classes, are
necessarily in cities and towns placed
where the sun cannot exert his charming
life-giving influence. Many a window Of
a grand house looks out upon nothing but
brick walls, which tower up high and
blot out the SUMS rays. The occupants
of these houses are often bound by the ex-
igencies of business to make their homes
for weary months in these shadowy
dwelling places.
Why, then, do they not bring the beau
tiful fern into requisition? What exquis-
lite grace would be shed over every room
in house If every available space were
occupied by the feathery fronds of these
beautiful plants?---on tables and side
boards, on mantel-picces and In window
stills, hanging from window rods, on the
landing of the stairs, in the hall, in the
bedrooms-everywhere, in fact. Why
notg Without any curtaiiment OF neces-
say space, without any inconvenience,
these beautiful plants might be SO arranged
as that every house, abe it never so hum
ble," might become "fern paradise"
The harder kinds, if kept within doors,
will survive the winter and look fresh and
green throughout; and the more delicate
and fragile of the species may be pre-
served in all their natural freshness under
a covering of glass. Plant them in case
duu CDNcI tuCl Will SUduc, anu tucH
you will have, even in midwinter, min
iature fernery. Do you want a sweet
smell as from country lane? Take off
the covering of glass, and your tiny i'm
prisoned favorites will exhale the sweet,
familiar odors, and where the moisture
has rested on their feathery tips there
you will see as il it had been dew-drops.
Have you dark, damp corner in your
garden, where you cannot get your
flowers to grow? If you have-and few
there are who have not, for everything
has its shady side-throw some loose
stones together in rockery form, and plant
ferns there. They will revel in the
obscurity Of the retreat which you have
chosen for them, and smile gracefully and
thankfully upon you from their dark
corner.
Everywhere, if you will, in your gar
dens and in your houses, you may have a
fern paradise" "a thing of beauty and
q joy forever" Even the poorest of the
poor--compelled by the unceasing press
ure Of "work! work! work I" to cry, in
the touching words which have immortal
lied their author
.sOh. but to breathe the breath
OF the cowsIip and primrose sweet,
With the sky above my head
And the grass beneath my feetr'-
may have, If they will, fern PARADISE
in the ssddcst and most cherries of sad
homes 49, HdS-Dersa Rnz0r