Some one may ask: 'You who enjoy so fully flowers, who hang over them in such transport when gathered, have you no interest in their cultivation? no care to watch their growth? no love for gardening, in short?' No! I reply; very little. I am satisfied to take the results of others' exertions. I have no wish to plod i' the mold,' not the slightest objection to others doing that business for me. I am too indolent to like out-door work very well; much too fond of late rising to enjoy weeding, digging, etc., in the early morning air. I think likely I ought to feel differently, but I don't. Suffer me to inquire _why_ people insist on peeping behind the scenes of nature's stage, when she seems to take such pains to conceal her '_modus operandi_'? Let me not be too sweeping, however. There is one kind of floriculture I could fancy. Plants reared in winter in the house, snatched from the biting cold, must be so caressingly tended! Vines, too, how precious they become--every tiny tendril regarded with such tenderness, and as the clinging branches wind in light festoons round parent shell or basket, so do they grasp the cords of the affections and twine exultingly around them. Hyacinths also are pleasant to sight and smell in warm, cheerful rooms when fast without fall drifting snows. It is the happiness of education, of association, of possession, that such plants afford. They are endeared inversely to their number, it may be--the solitary shrub being as the one ewe lamb. This joy in flowers differing thus materially from my pleasure in their artistic elements. Ah! when shall I stop? The civil public will be wearied out ere long, and so much has been left unsaid on my inexhaustible theme! When was a lover ever known to tire--_himself_? A lover! Here conscience has a word of reproach, '_Thou_ a _lover_, so unjust in thy self-conceit? Bringing down thy goddesses to be in truth very _idols_, the work of thy own hands--prating presumptuously of thy power over their immortal glories!' Verily, I am to blame, but how repair the error? Can eloquence be mine to fitly tell of the mighty influence of the flowers? Shall I say that, without their 'laughing light,' this world would be a dreary, lonesome place? It is a trite and tedious exclamation--an axiom past disputing. Shall I join in the grateful song resounding over every land; in homage to the blessing-laden blossoms? Lips long used to wailing swell that chorus loudest, for it was the sunshine caught in buttercup or dandelion that turned so many darkened faces in sudden smiles to heaven. Ah! they are the forms wasted and bowed down by anguish, that stoop most meekly, thankfully, only to lie where the daisies can grow over them. Shall I strive to spell the lesson written by the green earth's flowery tracery? Long, long ago One read that lore in love, and the lilies of the field but give it back to us to-day.