and feeling, I would set that spray before him and await reply. If
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like a lily of the field, the
angels of heaven have no vesture more ethereal than the flower of the
orchid. Let us take breath.

Many persons indifferent to gardening--who are repelled, indeed, by its
prosaic accompaniments, the dirt, the manure, the formality, the spade,
the rake, and all that--love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants
are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but
this is only for convenience--a receptacle filled with moss. The long
stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No
mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots
that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the
air. It asks no attention beyond its daily bath. From the day I tied it
on that block last year--reft from home and all its pleasures, bought
with paltry silver at Stevens' Auction Rooms--I have not touched it save
to dip and to replace it on its hook. When the flowers fade, thither it
will return, and grow and grow, please Heaven, until next summer it
rejoices me again; and so, year by year, till the wood rots. Then
carefully I shall transfer it to a larger perch and resume. Probably I
shall sever the bulbs without disturbing them, and in seasons following
two spikes will push--then three, then a number, multiplying and
multiplying when my remotest posterity is extinct. That is, so Nature
orders it; whether my descendants will be careful to allow her fair play
depends on circumstances over which I have not the least control.

For among their innumerable claims to a place apart among all things
created, orchids may boast immortality. Said Sir Trevor Lawrence, in the
speech which opened our famous Congress, 1885: "I do not see, in the
case of most of them, the least reason why they should ever die. The