ROUND THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XXIV, 14 December 1895, Page 741

ROUND THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

[WITH APOLOGIES TO THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST table.] APROPOS of the Floral Fete,’ said the Professor, ‘ I propose this morning the discussion of flowers, as a subject suitable to our sunny clime and our month of flowers.’ ‘ I love flowers,’ said the Simple Little Miss, ‘ excepting yellow ones, which kill the complexion. Some of them have such delicious meanings. Have you ever studied the “ Language of Flowers ?” ’ * All my life,’ said the Professor, ‘ has been devoted to studying the language of jlour, whose English equivalent is bread and butter, and I have found its idioms so engrossing, its “ where,” “when ” and “ how ” such difficult parts of speech to master, its adjectives of quantity and quality so limited in degree, as to leave me no time for the study of any other language. But I have heard that books of the sort are written, to be pondered long and earnestly by Du Maurier’s “ Young Person ” and made the first stepping-stone to the Divorce Court. The Young Person must on no account be permitted to so much as glance at literature dealing with the vital questions of her day, lest her maiden meditations be rendered less maidenly, but how becoming in sweet seventeen to be familiar with the contents of her dainty pocket manual, and items of such paramount importance as “Fuchsia, Stoop Down and Kiss Me,” etc., etc. How priceless the knowledge which enables her to blush, or simper, or sigh as occasion and the appropriate moment arrive. The Young Person in the old-fashioned novel was always “ culling ’• flowers as fresh and sweet and spotless as her innocent self, when her lover, or the party destined to be her lover after the regulation number of hair-raising horrors, arrived on the scene. He generally talked in this strain : “ My Amaryllis, the rose-bloom in your lovely countenance pales with its radiance the roses in your tiny pa-lm.” A stutter here would be fatal, should he favour the “ aw ” for “a ” vernacular of the Colonial “chappie,” but one never reads of a hero who is Colonial, or has a stutter. The Young Person in real life would tell him he oughtn’t, he really oughtn’t, to be so silly, and she hopes ma isn’t looking, and wonders if he has seen the new fern in the conservatory. Not so the Young Person in novels, who turns deathly pale—which young persons up-to-date would find a troublesome, not so say impossible accomplishment—and lowering her silken lashes, replies in accents quivering with emotion, “ Augustus, I have gathered them for you ; accept these blossoms as symbols of my undying affection.” Slow music and curtain.’ ‘ Flowers are pleasant,’ said the Practical Man, ‘ when' like Mrs Soap-manufacturer’s poor relations, they are made to “ know their place,” which isn’t Parliamentary debate. Gardens of flowery metaphor hurled at an inoffensive public are apt to deaden the olfactory sense, and strangle any other sort the speaker may have contemplated. The dry-as-dust nature of the utterance appears to contain the stimulus of bone-dust for his crop of thoughts, so profuse is his flowery verbage, while the House yawns or betakes itself to Bellamy’s, and the public rage. Only to “ England’s Cherished Bard,” as George Meredith calls the Leading Article, is it granted the right to blow daily bellows of choice and vafied wordblooms, pro bono publico, but then the public don’thave to pay the editor for his nosegays, while every member'sflower shop has to be supported at the rate of Z’24o per annum, which makes all the difference. Regarding the Floral Fete last Saturday, one cannot but feel that its “ object all sublime ” is calculated to do immense good to the community, and particularly the young community of Auckland, apart from the practical benefit its success has afforded the Benevolent Society. For to create a love of the beautiful in the heart of youth lays the first rafters to their unconscious striving after the beautiful in impulse and in action. “Through nature up to nature’s God ” is not the less a true though muchlyquoted maxim. Ouida, I think it is, makes colour and the love of artistic combination a religion with one of her heroines, while Ruskin has devoted much eloquence and not a little genius to the subject. Although not prepared to acknowledge the art of colour-combina-tion a religion, one feels that the study and cultivation of flowers as an art should do much to foster the sentiments of true religion in the young. We have all had cause to remember the enforced “Sundaybook” of childhood, which taught us to root up the wicked weeds and slugs from the gardens of our hearts. I don’t exactly remember whether slugs were mentioned —perhaps not —as they somewhat spoil the effect, but I know the weeds were a trump card of the Sunday book. It seems to me more profitable to encourage the children in cultivating their flowers—the weeds will die a natural death ; in other words, to fill their play-hours

with every healthy and innocent recreation, and leave no room for weeds or slugs or anything else ; to help them withstand the sirens of temptation with the music of Orpheus rather than the cords of Ulysses. This, the new “flower movement,” inaugurated by Mrs Thomas and other Auckland ladies, and through their diligent efforts resultant in a successful Children's Flower Show, and Saturday’s Floral Fete is eminently calculated to do. Think, moreover, of its purifying influence on the older generation—men in danger of blinding their souls with the clay of Waihi, women of drowning theirs in afternoon tea. Like Cincinnatus, turning from the affairs of state to follow his plough, fathers will leave their cares of business and their mammon worship, to interest themselves in the agricultural and floral pursuits of their children ; mothers will modify their fashionable and profitless and everlasting “ calling ” to assist theirown and other poor little ones, whose parents are struggling too hard for the dear necessities of life, to afford the luxury of a few plants in a square inch of garden. The new movement, will, we trust, prove the seed-field for “ purer manners, simpler laws,” and a rich harvest of enduring, nationmaking virtues in the rising generation. Then the flowers of our sunny Southern land will no longer be mute witnesses to deeds of tyranny, oppression, and shame. As poetic fancy puts it — “ Alas, each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing That some turn white as sea-bleached shells And some are always blushing.” Without cherishing an impossible Utopian dream for New Zealand, I yet prophesy that we shall ere long blush, not for our follies and our sins, but at the world’s praises of our national integrity and its admiring tribute to the happy social, religious, and political conditions of the land of our adoption.’