THE ROOT OF THE MATTER

SIR,--I am sorry not to be able to accept the graceful etymology of your
reviewer who calls me to task for not knowing how to pronounce the title
of my book Tuberose and Meadowsweet. I insist, he fancifully says, 'on
making "tuberose" a trisyllable always, as if it were a potato blossom
and not a flower shaped like a tiny trumpet of ivory.' Alas! tuberose is
a trisyllable if properly derived from the Latin tuberosus, the lumpy
flower, having nothing to do with roses or with trumpets of ivory in name
any more than in nature. I am reminded by a great living poet that
another correctly wrote:

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose.

In justice to Shelley, whose lines I quote, your readers will admit that
I have good authority for making a trisyllable of tuberose.--I am, Sir,
your obedient servant,

ANDRE RAFFALOVICH.
March 28.




PARNASSUS VERSUS PHILOLOGY