Flowers and fruit from the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

PALMETTO LEAVES.

Character.

A flower is commonly thought the emblem of a woman; and a woman is generally thought of as something sweet, clinging, tender, and perishable. But there are women flowers that correspond to the forest magnolia,—high and strong, with a great hold of root and a great spread of branches; and whose pulsations of heart and emotion come forth like these silver lilies that illuminate the green shadows of the magnolia forests.