Morning journal and courier., 1889-09-10
1res. lovely pink or crimson, satin or vel.

! ufes' ioVeiy plnk or crimson, satin or vel- vet, skirts and little green overskirts. The men were thorns from the hedoe ! which stood up very nicely when stuck in l the ground, or else they were bits of stick: ! but they were rather stiff and unbendinp- were these gentlemen-and really played 8
 very insignificant part in the flower ladies' households. ! r.s The houses in which the ladies lived were of the very simplest architecture; just bits of stick or blades of grass laid together in squares to inclose rooms and halls. A green leaf made pretty bed, and tiny flat pebbles furnished beautiful chairs. Then @ chip served exeellently for grand mahogany ta- ble. and upon very small mud-pies frosted with sand, and mud chocolate custards, in acorn-cups, and loaves of mud-bread, the flower ladies lived luxuriously. Our ladies were divided into two families. My sisters family always bore the surname of Grey. and mine was called Graham. Tho big Solfaterre roses with the thick loose pet als were the grandmothers, because they had wide laps for the babies to rest upon. The common damask-roses were nice comfortable mothers, who were careful lest the children should get their feet vet, and always had ready lovely mud-pies for the children when they came home from school. The Gloire de France roses were the sweet young aunts named Mabel or Irene, and the moss-roses and old fashioned thorn-roses were the ugly-tempered aunts, called Jane or Maria.
 There was rose bush that bore very long, slender white buds, and one of these buds, ways girl named Kate, who had hurt her spine: Lying on the orauge-leaf sofa, she bore her sufferings with touching fortitude. I Next came the children. The Greys sHd Grahans had very large families. The pica- yune e-roses came in here, the fullest-blown ! kind being the eldest girls of about twelve, ! and from these they went down through va- | rious ages to the tiny, tiny bud that wes the | newborn baby rocked to sleep in velvety
 rose leaf, and so sensitive that all the little \ flower children had to tread lightly for fear | of waking her.
 ! Such lovely times those Greys and Gra- ! hams had! They went sailing on big mag
 nolia leaf in the garden ditch, or visited \ each other, driving up in O banana-leaf car riage, or danced at big balls, or gave splen-
 did dinner-parties. Perhaps the best fun of
 all were the christenings and the burials. | When the Grey and Graham babies were old enough everybody drove to the grand church
 built for the occasion, and there they were baptized. The font was @ white rose leaf | filled with water, and there was always so
 much excitement over choosing a name for ' with quantities of christening-cups of acorn ware coming in every moment, that there
 wasn't anything but funeral that was near. ly ss interesting.
 When somebody's stem broke or the leaves
 dropped off, which happened frequently, the
 body vas carefully wrapped in banana-leai
 and hauled away to the grave in Japan | plun-leaf hearse. And there were sermons
 and hymns, and the flower ladies cried
 drsadfully and didn't give any more parties for 8 long time.
 When we were kept in the house by rain 6
 servant went out with an umbrella and ! fetched us in lots of roses, and then we
 played flower ladies in more artificial style.
 The furniture was made of pasteboard, ol
 kind with which every little girl is famtl-
 far.
 All the family wore dresses cut from tissue
 paper, just oval pieces, with a little hole ir | the middle to put the stems through. The
 children's school dresses were simply pieoei
 of plain paper, but their elders wore elabo
 rate costumes cut in open-work patterns-l
 sort of lace er-drc sses-through which tn, \ pink or red satin skirts could be seen. ' While mamma and grandmamma werl
 supposed to cut out these beautiful frooks
 the children were at school, and Irene ani | Mabel, the kind aunts, sat at the little sea ! shell piano and sang one of these two song ' (which seemed to be the only ones the,
 knew3
 't Over the far blue mounta;,,
 Over the white sea foam,
 Come, thou long pa. ted one, N Come to thy home!
 or,
 Gayly the troubadour
 |. hod h