Vulgar words in Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers (Page 1)
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 645 ~ ~ ~
She has only one kind of flowers--in her hand, as botanical classification stands at present; and whether the system be more rational, or in any human sense more scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell together,--and foxglove and euphrasy; and runs them on one side into the mints, and on the other into the nightshades;--naming them, meanwhile, some from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest anyhow:--or the method I am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful of their seasonable return and chosen abiding places, to associate in our memory the flowers which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other; and to name them in some historical connection with the loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of the ancestral world--Proserpina be judge; with every maid that sets flowers on brow or breast--from Thule to Sicily.