The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1904-02-08
NEWS OF THE BOOK WORLD
A Poets View Of What the World Would
Be Without Flowers, Told In Prose--A
Wealthy Society Woman's Novel--Mark
Twain Writing New Novel,

What would humanity be without flow
ers! How much do they reveal to the soul
OF man of the wonders Of the universe?
How largely do they enter into his con-
tceptlon of the material world? These and a
host OF other questions are suggested and
in part answered by Maurice Maeterlinck.
the poet in the February magazine num-
Der Of The Outlook, issued Saturday. Mr..
Maeterlinck puts his own questions and
hints at answers In part as quoted below,
and therein is something to think about:
Can we conceive what humanity would
be il 1t did not know the flowers? II
these did not exist, If they had all been
hidden from our gaze, as are probably a
thousand no less fairy sights which are all
around us but invisible to our eyes, would
our character, our faculties, our sense Of
the beautiful, our aptitude for happiness,
bt quite the same? We should, it is true,
have other splendid manifestations in ma
ture OF luxury, eXuberance and grace;
other dazzling efforts Of the superfluous
forces; the sun, the stars, the varied
lights Of the moon, the azure and the
ocean, the dawns and twilights, the
mountain, the plain, the forest and. the
rivers, the light and the trees, and, lastly
nearer to us, birds, precious stones and
woman. Those are the ornaments of our
planet. Yet, but for the last three, which
belong to the same smile of nature, how
grave, austere, almost sad would be the
education of our eye, without the softness
Which the flowers give! Suppose for mo-
ment that our globe knew them not; a
great region, the most enchanted in the
joys OF our psychology, would be destroyed
or rather would not be discovered. All OF
delightful sense would sleep forever al
the bottom of our harder and more desert
hearts and in our imagination stripped q
Worshipful images. The infinite world Of
coiors and shades would have been but
1ncompletely revealed to US by few rents
in the sky. The miraculous harmonies o.
light at play, ceaselessly inventing new
gayeties, reveling in itself, would be un.
known to us, for the flower first broke w
the prism and made the most subtle por
ton Of our sight. And the magic garden
OF perfumes; who would have opened it!
gate to us? A few grasses, a few gums
few fruits, the breath of the dawn, tn,
| smell OF the night and the sea, would hav.
told US that beyond our eyes and ear.
there existed a shut paradise where tn,
air which we breathe changes into de
lights Tor which we could have found n,
name.
Consider also all that the voice O
human happiness would lack! One of tn
blessed heights of our SOUL would be al
most dumb, if the flowers had not. sine
centuries, fed with their beauty the Ian
guage which we speak and the thought
that endeavor to crystalline the most pre-
| clous hours of life. The whole vocabulary
all the impressions of love, are impregnat
with their BREATH nourished with thei
smile When we love- all the flowers tina
we have seen and smelt seem to haste,
Within us to people with their know
charms the consciousness of a sentimen
whose happiness, but for them, woul
| nave no more form than the horizons Q
the sea or sky. They have accumulate
within US, since our childhood, and eve
before it, in the soul Of our fathers, an i'm
mense treasure, the nearest to our joys
upon which we draw each time that W
wish to make more real the clement min
utes OF our life. They have created an
spread in our world of sentiment tn
fragrant atmosphere in which love de
lights