The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-03-09
AND "CYTHEREA"

What, l wonder, would sick peo-
 pie do without beautiful flowers and books. and wonderful friends!
 Two weeks in a sick room-lcok- ing out upon a veritable avalanche Of marvellous flowers-tuhps. and blood red carnations; narcissi and jonQuils that breathe the gentle air of the springtime; great stalks of i hyacinths and dainty mignonettc; sprays of asparagus ferns and sor- geous stately roses-what a riot of color and fragrance and joy such low
 ing thoughts of dear unfsiiing friends make in a sick room, while here and there a potted flower gives the patient the happy anticipation each morning Of seeing that some one has freshened up the earth about the little flower. and moistened it with water and made it bloom anew Happy sick one who has such low ing friends such thoughtful friends, such true friendsi
 1 And then those other friends, our | "hooks"-books of all kinds and shapes and styles and descriptions! In the two weeks which have just 1 passed I have read everything under i the sun it seems to me from the
 Shorter Bible" (Old and New Tes- taments) to Marcus Aurelius" and l "Cytherea."
 It has been just one book after an other and such delightful retro spective reading in many instances of old favorite volumes-"A Tale of Two Cities" with the love story of Lucy Manette and Charles Darnay and the greatest of Dickens heroes, Sidney Carton; "The Mill on the Floss" with adorable Magic Tulliver
 and the dear old lady to whom
 spelling was a matter of personal ] preference"; ''Une Vie" and Bel Amir of deMaupassant's; Madame 1 Bovary' of Flaubert's; Renee Mau- perin", the best of all the novels of the Goncourt brothers "A and J) Daisy Miller" and An International Romance" from the pen of the cryp- tic Mr. James; "Pendennis" with Mir. Thackery's marvellous picture of the i old major and young pen; and the ever delightful old fashioned Gran ford' which I hadn't read in years upon top of years.
 1 couldn't find my copy of Don Quixote"-whieh was the only req
 son I didn't reread it.
 And then into modernity's realms. "The Green Bough.' by my beloved Mir. Temple Thurston who wrote the book that I love so well, "The City
 of Beautiful Nonsense "The Lost GirI' tD. Ii. i4aWrence). Dangerous Ages" of Rose Macaulay's Mrs. ] ProhaclS" by the delectable MT. Ar
 mold Bennett The Line of Love " and "Chivalry" by NIT. James Branch Gabelrs; "In Defense of Women" of
 H. L. Mencken's; and "Cytherea" If the nice lady who read MT. W. | l.. Georges Ursula Trent" and promptly consigned it 10 the flames 1 in the kitchen stove. reads "Cythe- req I fancyl like Mr Walter Say 1 age Landor, who threw his cook out 1 of the window, she will do precisely ! that, at the same time probably ex i claiming with MT. Landor.
 Good God-I forgot the violets." This happened at Fiesole, near i Florence more than d century ago i the great prose master having rathe. an eXeitable temperament as Charles l Dickens testified: the novelist put i him in Bleak House" as "Boythorn' l if you remember-"with the genius i and much less left out as Have | lock Ellis exclaims.
 MT. Landor ,dearly loved his flow 1 CTS and in his dismay gave birth to a l classic phrasei
 ] The one reason that "Cytherea wouldn't be dashed out of the window