See this, also: A ground-glass vase, containing a perfect white camellia, the daphneodora, and fuchsias, crimson and white.
And this: A slender, tall vase of the ruby Bohemian glass, with varieties of the colceolaria, their tiny purses specked with brown, from light tan to velvety maroon.
These, it will be seen, are all medium-sized bouquets. Larger ones, requiring more material, are not so easy to describe. Some summer flowers found in every garden—the double stocks (gilli-flowers) blend their varied shades finely with the glittering coreopsis, the sombre mourning-bride, and the violet cerulean Canterbury bells.
In winter, with ample resources, one can produce masterpieces. What think you of callas—their frozen calm kindled by the ruddy flush of azaleas, and their superb stateliness opposed by the flexile vivacity of the feathery willow acacia? The same white lilies, or their deliciously sweet July representatives, are contrasted well with scarlet geranium, vivid and glowing, or with the flames of the cactus, and toned down by the bluish lavender of the wistaria. This makes a bouquet eminently suited for church—its colors forming Ruskin's sacred chord, and typifying the union of purity, love, and faith.
Flowers on the altar are most appropriate and significant, but strict attention should be paid to their symbolism. For the communion-table there are lilies of the valley, and in its season, the rosy snow of the blooming fruit-trees. Nor must the passion-flower be forgotten—and against its mystic darkness set the china pink clusters of the oleander. If they are not procurable, substitute great half-opened rose-buds, deepest pink and cream-color, and add the broken stars of the stephanotis. This last, twined among the glossiest and darkest leaves of the rhododendron, forms a fitting crown for the gray hairs of the dead, passing away in fullness of years and of honors.
Chrysanthemums brought by November, and half-faded, as it were, in the waning light, are most meet offerings for the departing year to lay at the holy shrine.
Thus much for spiritual flowers. Others there are in contrast, material merely, hearty, substantial, and robust. I take singularly to all such, calumniated as vulgar. And why not keep a corner in our souls for the common and every-day, as for the elegant and rare?
There is a noon of sharp, bustling matter-of-fact, as well as a morn of high, noble aspiration, and an eve of hushed and solemn reverie. It is in the noon, too, that our active life takes place; why not enjoy ourselves then, as only it is possible? So why not allow certain lower faculties of our nature to delight in what are called the grosser flowers? Why not cultivate their acquaintance, as we would that of motherly, kind, portly, and phlegmatic old ladies, rustling in their silks and satins, with a comfortable complacency, satisfied with their own share of fortune's goods, and benevolently disposed toward their less favored neighbors?
To be sure much can not be said of the artistic capabilities of some of these cronies. One does not care to transfer marigolds, poppies, lilacs, phlox, cockscomb, and cabbage-roses from their own garden-homes to the more elevated sphere of domestic life. But snow-balls, 'flaunting' petunias, double hollyhocks, China asters, and tulips, they certainly are available. By the way, what business have the juvenile story-books to stigmatize tulips as vain and proud? The splendid things have a right to be conscious of their glorious clothing. Who gave it them? And dahlias, what purples, crimsons, and oranges they boast! Formal they may be, but, at least in Yankee parlance, handsome, and when arranged with woodbine-leaves October's earliest frosts have painted, can there be a finer expression of the season of autumn?
In this connection one remembers Miss Mitford and her charming history of the loss of her yellow pride—the Apollo among dahlias. Lovable Miss Mitford! how pleasant would have been a flower-talk with her!