Smyrna times., 1891-08-12

place they pay anew. The difference
between the price of their purchases
and the sale of the same is their pro.
fit. The sale closes in summer, at 8,
in winter at 8 o'clock"
There are thousands of these hand.
cart vendors who change their mer-
chandise according to the needs of the
day, from flowers to vegetables and
oysters. They scatter the roses of
Nice in mid-February. Buying at low
prices they sell low. The flower girls
who make and sell buttOn-hOle bou-
quets in the street, are not the flower
girls of romance and of song. Age.
toll and poverty have left few traces
among of beauty them. Between four
and five hundred gardeners devote
themselves to the forced cultivation of
flowers, not by the hOt-house process,
but by a method which pushes for
ward the choicest flowers at all seasons
OF the year, but exhausts the life of
the plant. At try-SuT-Seine, six
hundred acres are cOnsecrated to the
cultivation of Towering plants that can
be forced. The operation lasts from
20 to 80 days. Nine months they are
subject to heat and six or seven gath.
erings are made in year. The hot
houses in which the lilacs were forced
are buried in darkness. The color
however, does not depend entirely
upon the absence of light. The prin-
cipal color cannot be produced except
between certain limits oftemperature
The complete suppression of light
turns highly cOlOred plant into a
white lilac, and the graduation of the
same light produces different degrees
OF color. FOrceags idually becom-
ing more general, and the 'hasablest
florist the market gardeners, to utilize
the heat of their primitive hot houses.
dig the earth three feet under their
hot bed frames out of the reach of
light, and there, by a process which
astonlshes one, they simply depOsi
the plant in the naked earth without
burying the root, and obtain in this
way white lilacs.
What becomes of the vast supplv of
flowers that day by day, throughout
the yearinundates the market ? Some
are made up into corsage bouquets,
that, by the revival of an old fashion.
the Partisan ladies wear in the streets.
and quantities are used in button-hole
bouquets. MarvelOusly beautiful flo.
raj designs, with magnificent ribbon
decoration, are displayed in the for
lists windows, at all seasons. These
expensive luxuries are for actresses
and that gay world of women who pa.
rade in sumptuOus carriages their bold
beauty on the Bots and at the races.
and whom good women shun. Paris
ian managers forbid bowers being ham
ded over the fOOt-lights except to stars.
But rarely does the ballet beauty fail
to receive them en- arriere. He who
has not beheld the Eden ballet riding
home in her hower-decked carriage.
her gauze skirts rising like foam from
sea, not of water but OF flower, the
trophies of one night of adulation, has
missed one of the sights of Paris.
Bernhardt is passionately fond of flow
ers. In one of her plays she wears a
glrdle of orchids. Last winter her re.
grets to Julian artist dinner took the
form ola plaster medallion of her own
face, buried in a basket of Parme vio-
lets. Judic and Granier are the for
lists most lavish patrons. The garden
scenes in plays and operas are frequent
ly set in natural flowers. Miss Eames
as Marguerite, in Faust, plucks roses
from growing bushes. Juliet signs
from a flower trellised balcony. Not
to have an enchantress upon whom to
lavish flowers, is still a reproach upon
a youth OF the Latin quarter.
But the Parisians of all classes have
a passion for flowers. Babies are often
carried to the baptismalfOnt in a cradle
or basket of roses. At the annual
flower festival in the Bots de Boulogne
carriage wheels, harness and drivers
are decorated with flowers. A beauti-
full woman in a floral hat, reclining on
hower-decKed carriage, is JOY for
ever. Hundreds dash through the
Bois and the pedestrians express their
approval by pelting them with flowers.
Prizes are offered the finest decorated
vehicle. The French almost literally
bury their dead in flowers. Coffee
houses, dairy shops. butchers and
bakers stalls all distil the fragrance of
flowers, and the shrines of churches
are often so deluged with the votive
OF the faithful that the images are
scarcely discernible, especially after "A
wedding, for it is customary for the
bridal cOrtege te lay all floral gifts at
the feet of the favOrite saint, where
the forced flower mingles its refined
color and perfume with its plebeian
kindred, after the offering of poor,
lonely wayfarer in this "vale of tears"