A Red Rose Breakfast.
"I find earth not gray, but rosy,
Heaven not grim, but fair of hue."
Here is a pretty breakfast for the month of June.
Have for the centerpiece a huge bowl of jacque-minot roses. Use long sprays of the leaves and arrange the flowers very loosely in the bowl.
Have for the boutonnieres at each cover a bunch of red rose buds tied with scarlet ribbon.
The place cards are also red roses cut to the required shape from rough drawing paper and appropriately colored.
Of course the red touch will be introduced as frequently as possible into the menu. Serve tomato soup, salmon salad and claret water ice. Cakes must be glazed in red, and the ice cream, served in artistic little baskets of spun sugar, to take the form of red roses.
Have side dishes filled with pink coated almonds and candied rose petals.
Then, during the dessert course, introduce what is called a Rose Shower.
This will be on the order of the literary salads that were so popular some time ago, but it is newer.
The idea is this: Cut from red tissue paper a couple of dozen little leaf shaped pieces to be crimped and creased and coaxed into representing rose petals. On each petal write a familiar quotation relating to the rose.
These leaves are to be passed around the table, each guest taking one, and when done with it, passing it on.
Prizes will be offered to the guests who are able to name the authors of the largest number of quotations.
Here are some of the verses:
That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
—Shakespeare.
But earthlier happy is the rose distilled
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
—Shakespeare.
The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new;
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew,
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.
—Scott.
'Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone.
—Moore.
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
—Moore.
He wears the rose
Of youth upon him.
—Shakespeare.
As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.
—Keats.
She wore a wreath of roses,
That night when first we met.
—T. H. Bayley.
The rose that all are praising
Is not the rose for me.
—T. H. Bayley.
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives his little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
—Bryant.
Flowers of all hue and without thorn the rose.
—Milton.
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she.
—Tennyson.
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered.
—Bible.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow wille be dying.
—Herrick.
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk.
—Shakespeare.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.
—Marlowe.
These, of course, will be only about half enough, but the hostess can add others to them.
The prize for the best list of answers should suggest roses in some way.