"I like white flowers better than any others; they resemble fair women. Lily, Tuberose, Orange, and the truly English Syringa are my heart's delight. I do not mean to say that they supplant the Rose and Violet in my affections, for these are our first loves, before we grew _too fond of considering_; and too fond of displaying our acquaintance with others of sounding titles." In Japan, where flowers have rank, white flowers are the aristocrats. I deem them the aristocrats in the gardens of the Occident also. Having been informed of Tennyson's dislike of white flowers, I have amused myself by trying to discover in his poems evidence of such aversion. I think one possibly might note an indifference to white blossoms; but strong color sense, his love of ample and rich color, would naturally make him name white infrequently. A pretty line in _Walking to the Mail_ tells of a girl with "a skin as clean and white as Privet when it flowers"; and there were White Lilies and Roses and milk-white Acacias in Maud's garden. In _The Last Tournament_ the street-ways are depicted as hung with white samite, and "children sat in white," and the dames and damsels were all "white-robed in honor of the stainless child." A "swarthy one" cried out at last:-- "The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year, Would make the world as blank as wintertide. Come!--let us gladden their sad eyes With all the kindlier colors of the field. So dame and damsel glitter'd at the feast Variously gay.... So dame and damsel cast the simple white, And glowing in all colors, the live grass, Rose-campion, King-cup, Bluebell, Poppy, glanced About the revels." [Illustration: Foxgloves in Lower Garden at Indian Hill.]