THE LOVE OF FLOWERS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 2715, 30 January 1892, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE LOVE OF FLOWERS.

“As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” is a trite saying, the truth of which we sometimes forget. Nearly three thousand years ago the wisest of men declared, “ Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Most persons are born with a natural love for flowers. I never yet saw a toddler whose eyes did not light up with pleasure at the sight of bright blossoms, and whose fingers did not itch to hold in their grasp “the pitty flowers,” and small boys show fully as much liking therefor as their sisters. It is considered the proper thing for our girls to wear flowers, to love them and care for them, and so encouraged and trained, the majority of our girls grow up into flower-loving women. On the contrary, in many homes the boys are made to feel that tho love of flowers is “ girlish,” and trust our modern boy for wanting at all times to be “ mannish!” So our boys smother their natural liking with a forced indifference, which later, alas ! becomes a second nature. Ninetynine hundredths of the men and women who manifest this indifference never had their tastes cultivated in this direction while young. It is freely admitted that there is refining, elevating influence about flowers. Why, then, should not parents feel it a duty to encourage the love of the beautiful in bud and bloom.— Vick's Magazine.