The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1912-03-09
sY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.

eY ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.
This Is the time of year when the
seedmans catalogue is the most fas-
reading in your repertoire.
The day has been "cold and dark
and dreary."
Everything has gone wrong.
People have acted in the most irri-
tating and incomprehensible manner.
Aware of your own exalted virtue in
refusing to notice their impertinences
and studied insults, their egotism and
crudities. their lack of diplomacy and
consideration for SO distinguished and
important person as yourself. you still
murmur, between your teeth
Fooled again!"
For you know they never knew that
you we're being forebearing and pre-
tending to yourself to practice the Col
den Rule.
That they never would know and
never could understand"
You know you might as we'll have
been impudent and insulting In your
turn for all the good it did you in es-
tablishing a reputation for decency
and Christianity.
BY ignoring it all you have merely
invited further depredations upon the
territory Of your delightful personality
The horrid feeling steals DER you
able one in this distraught and
strangely assorted world
IAN eye for an eye. tooth for a
tooth"
You decide to revise some of the an
cient precepts.
You conclude that-"when thy broth
or offends thee do not turn the other
cheek for him to smite but give him a
swift upper cut and land it deftly in
the jaw" will sound well.
Or. when thy sister stabs thee in
the back. bin her in the face"
So pleased are you with these bril-
liant coruscations of your brain that
you believe you will get out a book of
modern aphorisms and amuse yourself
conjuring up title
"The Golden Rule brought down to
date" or.
"Tf sermon on the Mount with Va
riations." or,
"Old saws reversed, complete
manuel of instructions of how to do
your brother"
BY this time you are SO delight ed
with yourself and your imaginary fistic
and moral victories over those who
have despitefully used you that you
are ready to be as agreeable as the
members Of the family, who have been
shut up in the house all day on account
Of the mud and rain, will permit.
You turn on the light. sink into your
Morris chair and pick up that gorgeous
yet substantial trifle, the Florists
Guide, compared with whose fictions
no best seller could ever hope to COM
pete.
You flip over the pages.
No art is SO alluring. SO insiduous,
60 intimately appealing as that of the
illustrator to the floral seed cata-
logue.
Visions of landscape splendor, adorn-
ed according to Hoyle, float before
your enchanted vision.
Your own backyard-but you shunt
the offensive, plebian and ash-ridden
suggestion-your garden you behold in
your minds eye, brilliant with orien-
tai poppies as large as gravy bowls,
larkspur raised to one million candle
power, and hitting the high spots on
the wood-house caves, phlox as big as
butter-dishes, fleur-de-is-known to
the uncou as the "flag"-in seventeen
different varieties. and all of hither-
to unheard color.
Roses blushing with delighte ed shame
over their dewy debuts and thousand
to the square inch; other roses. ar
IDENTIFY clamboring over the unsightly
places on the kitchen walls and twin
ing the horrid old telephone wires;
equatorial vines. blooming decadently
but delightfully."- at night. rioting over
everything in sight and a row of sun.
flowers. with fringed faces as big as
wash-tubs. cutting off visual communi-
cation with the alley.
The blossom which intrigues you
the most may be the scarlet flax Its
flaming beauties are indecorously and
unblushingly Haunted from the page
and, later. duplicated on the cover OF
tho aood onvolopo