The Savannah morning news., 1902-08-24
From the London Telegraph.


There are many cynics loose in Lon
don. The cabby and the buss driver
nave lost their belief in the wisdom of
man over the everlasting eruptions of
the Strand. The gentlemen who sell
''extry- speshuls" by shouting news
which the extra specials do not con-
tain never had any The lions in Ira
falgar square. monuments of departed
greatness, look YEARLY and cynicaIly
upon the present httleness that ha-
rangues them on sunday afternoon.
There are church wardens who have
found a bad franc in the plate. and a
thousand others who divide IN tnkind
into knaves and fools. But the cyni-
cism of all these is thrown into the
! shade by the monumental cynicism of
the flower girl
Flower girls, of course, are not TrO:-
umentaI except by cOntInguity. They
haunt statues-the commanding Sir
Robert Peel who presides over Cnea D.
sides or the dirty Mercury who brings
from Olympus to the less heavenly re-
gions of PiccadiIly In theory the flow
er girl is highly poetical. In practice
she is cynical in eXcelsis. 1t is partly
the cause of the climate "Carnation
lily, rose, is all very we'll in a picture
or poem. When you have t sell
them in a twentieth century May you
DO not look pictorial, and your len-
guage is rather expressive than poet,-
cal 1t is hard to be sentimental with
blue nose. There are degrees in the
trade. The button holes that cover
some square feet belong to d diffe. at
caste of vendor and a diff mt caste
OF wearer from the eminently respect
bic carnations and rosebuds of Pic
| ufacture for the jewellers IN out dark
ness jungles of maidenhair and mar
clssus are not a whit less cynical than
the artists among flower girls who
dwell in the shadow Of Mercury
| They see the vanity of the lordly sex
as under searchlight And the lord
ly sex is vain, whether the hat it wears
with its frock coat is of silk or straw
The silk hat ponders deeply over the
shade of its rose; the straw hat grasps
greedily at another inch of green back
ground. 1t is the same principle, and
the same cynicism says when it has
gone "Lor, Polly, there's a fool" There
are many strangers within our gates
strangers with clean-shaven faces and
nasal drawl. strangers also with
floppy ties and terribly neat mustaches.
The strangers come to the flower girl
and she takes them in. 1t is all one
to her. The American is brisk and
brusque, but he pays all the more
The Frenchman is profusely polite, but
he pays none the less. They are both
mere foolish men to the cynical flower
girl. Her chief joy--if she has a Joy
is the youth who desires to be made
splendid without counting the cost. He
is not only profitable, but amusing.
Her chief sorrow. no doubt, is her
own sex, who have a mean and unscru-
pulous desire to pay just prices. Her
own sex. unlike the mere man, general
~ buy in bulk, for the decoration of
their homes, not themselves. This is
disheartening practice, which con-
firms the cynicism of the flower girl.
A few inches of wire will not suffice
to make bunch of flowers, and the
e1acting female pays just about as
much for dozen good blooms as a
man does for one decrepit specimen
with wire leg. Consequently the
flower girl believes neither in the brain
of man nor the heart of woman, and
sits in the lee of statues, cynical and
blue. 1t was a lawyer who said that
only fools went to law The flower
girl knows who buys flowers.