THE DAHLIAS OF AN EMPRESS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 20 July 1937, Page 12

THE DAHLIAS OF AN EMPRESS

It is interesting to note that Josephine, Empress of the French, was a dahlia enthusiast —-for a while ! She became passionately fond of the flower, which, improved by the Swedish botanist., Dahl, afas given his name. Josephine planted dahlias at Malmaison with her own jealous hands. She invited Royalty to view her garden. But, ‘‘No, no. no!” she cried a thousand times when asked for one ' bloom. So proudly selfish was she of her precious flowers that she would not permit one seed, root, or bloom to leave Malmaison. But along came trouble in the handsome form of a Bolish Brince. He would probably have treated dahlias with no more than a passing nod had they been his for the asking. But, as matters were, ho looked around Malmaison for a gardener who had a business eye. Little did Josephine suspect, as she entrusted this gardener with the task of helping her tend her dahlias, that the Polish Prince had bribed him to steal a hundred dahlias at a louis apiece. But the gardener did bis work well, and so the dahlias came into the possession of the Brince. Besides turning her hack forever on the Prince, and dismissing the gardener, Josepliino also turned her hack on her dahlia garden, and petulantly refused to tolerate even one bloom, in a rase or bouquet, forever after. —E.L.M. in the Sydney Morning Herald.