Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1881 — Waste and Abase of Flowers. [ARTICLE]

Waste and Abase of Flowers.

Masses of flowers on a dinner table are an anomaly; there is something almost offensive in the mingled odor of their perfume and the reek of the dishes and lights.- At a ball they are not out of place and keeping for certain purposes. Roses, lilies, carnations, violets are natural adornments for a young woman, and a bunch of them in her hand or on her breast is an appropriate ornament, and the complement of her evening dress; but where is the fitness, the beauty*the sentiment, the common sense, when she has six, a dozen, or twenty? Are there twenty persons, or twelve, or even six, at the same time to send her flowers which mean more than if they were of wax or tissue paper, or which have any more intrinsic value to her who carries them? Are they witnesses of love, or even of admiration? How many are sent merely to gratify the demands of vanity? At every ball rival beauties carry bouquets sent to each by the same men. Many are aent by memibers of the lady’s family, which takers half the significance from flowers sent by the same kinsfolk on birthdays, or fin sickness, or at a time of special joy [or sorrow. And what is to be said of the bouquets sent as bribes to women of fashion by men who wish to obtain their good offices? And what of those sent by a man to a woman whom he admires, not to give her pleasure, but prestige-i----to gratify her vanity and reflexly his own! There is an instance, well known, in one of our great cities, of ono man sending several bouquets for the same ball, to console her for a social slight; she appeared to be unitiated as a great belle and he as the belle’s favored cavalier. And what of the bouquets stacked on the front cushion of a proscenium box, in the blast of the footlights and flung, half-faded, to a prima donna, to whom they are already a drug, who perhaps is hurrying through her part to leave town by the next train? —Atlantic Monthly.