The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-04-11
THE LEGEND OF
 EASTER LILIES
No Flower Has Been More K0nOred in Song or
 Story

No flower has been more honored in song or story than the imperial lily. Its pretty and it's stately bear ing have caused it to be chosen as the symbol of divinity and the badge Of kings.
 Although in this country we under stand by the word lily the lily of the valley, the stately calla or the won- derful harrisli or Easter lily, these are only three varieties of a very found in all quarters of the earth. Ev anywhere the lily has been honored and held a sacred flower. whether by the banks of the storied Nile or Gan ges, where as the lotus, it received honors little short of those accorded to deity, or in heather Greece, where it was consecrated to Juno, the spot less yet imperious queen of Olympus, or later in Christian countries, where the flower was dedicated to the VIr- gin Mary. No great artist when ne painted the Holy Mother ever forgot to place near her the flower that was the symbol of her heavenly rank. It is also in art the symbol of saints. martyrs and angels.
 The Easter lily is a native of the east. Those now cultivated in Der muda and popularly known as the Bermuda lily were originally import ed there from Japan for comm erc1aI purposes. The lily played an 1m-
 
 years ago. It happened that the F1owery Kingdom was ruled by the Emperor Chow, a monarch universal ly feared and hated. No one could depend on his favor, and at last his best friend, the prime minister, Lii Chung, began to tremble for his life. Knowing we'll the bloodthirsty na- ture of the emperor, Li Chung de- vised a clever scheme to escape from his power.
 II, I,z e |, emperor was in a favorable mood he broached the plan. It was that 100 of the strongest young men and 100 of the most beautiful maidens should be sent with him on board ship to an island in the sea which he said had been revealed to him in a dream by the gods. There, for the welfare of China (and its conditions could not have been much worse, these people were to be sacrificed to the deities of | their native country. There was sanguinary touch about the plan that particularly recommended it to the bloodthirsty mind of wicked old | Crow and he immediately gave cheer l full assent to the project, even show ed his interest by throwing in a roy al prince and princess.
 | The ship in which Lii Chung and the hundred young men and maidens sailed was the very finest that China | afforded. The larder was filled with l da1nt1es, and every provision was l made that the victims should be kept in first class condition until the time 1 for the sacrifice. The best tomtom musicians in the kingdom were loan 1 ed for the voyage to charm the ears of the passengers with sweet sounds But in vain the artists played their most 1 pleasing compositions; nobody would l sing or dance while the prevalence of 1 red fire indicated that good deal of ! weeping was going on.
 When they were far from China however, Lii Chung took the passen- gers into his confidence. He had not intended to kill them at all in- stead they were going to the most beautiful island in the world, where | they would settle and where they would live happily ever afterward, far from the power of the wicked chow.
 This island was Japan, and here they did settle. But they had brought l with them great quantities of lily | bulbs as food. Nobody had been able l to eat much on shipboard, and quan- titles of these bulbs were left over. They were planted and in the balmy climate of the Flowery Kingdom they attained a beauty unknown in China Years later some Europeans, dis covered the beauty of this flower, inn ported it into their own countries, and called 1t the Lilium longif1orium But as an American named Harris was practically the first to discover the flower and make 1t popular in two continents 1t is now called the Lilium harrissii.