Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1915 — FolK We Touch In Passing [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FolK We Touch In Passing

By Julia Chandler ManZ

<g> AACCLURE WEWSMPtR •SyTTDICATE-'

THE GARDEN AND THE FLOWER The Man had a beautiful garden. In it were flowers so many and so rare that everybody talked about it until its fame spread to the ends of the earth. For many years The Man traveled far and near in search of unusual plants and brought them to his garden. Indefatigably he worked to keep out the weeds, although iris friends said he was a dreamer whose wagon was hitched to an impossible star. They told him that no garden in all this world was without its weeds, and declared that they were natural and wouldn't do any damage. The Man only smiled, shook his head, and went on working to rout every ugly and obstinate growth. Sometimes he stood in the midst of his garden in the cool of the evening and looked about him to see that it was fair, but each time there seemed to him that something was lacking. He knew that the fame of his work had extended far; that men said his garden was the most perfect in all the world; but in his heart of hearts he was not entirely satisfied. Some shade of beauty was clearly missing; some needed perfume lacking. So The Man determined that he would find the flower needed, no matter whatHhe cost. He went on a long journey, searching in every nook and cranny, but he did not find out even so much as the name of the flower which his garden needed, so he returned to work among his plants in great dejection. One day The Artist came to visit The Man. He was as renowned for his painting as The Man for his garden, and, although he lived at a great distance, he had heard of the radiance of the garden in which The Man had cultivated rare and wonderful plants, and determined to see the place for himself. When The Artist had spent an hour in The Man's garden, it seemed to him that he must have died and gone to heaven. He simply reveled in the riot of color and steeped his senses in the perfume of the flowers. “It is a perfect place,” he told The Man.

“I wonder?” came the dejected plyAfter this The Artist said nothing; but he, too, began to wonder, for when the first impression of its radiance wore away The Artist became conscious of something wrong. The garden was not perfect, and it was clear enough that The Man, who had given all the years of his youth to making i* so, was sad and disappointed. “There is a flower missing." said The Artist. ■ “I know,” answered The Man. “but I do not know its name, and therefore I cannot find ft.” The Artist looked into the sad, sad eyes of The Man. “Why, of course," he cried out, suddenly; “I should hare known in the first place.' - Whereupon he whispered the name of the most beautiful flower in all the world to The Man. "I shall r*ek it at once,* cried The Man, “but Saw shall I know when t

“By its perfume,” answered The Artist. "It is like unto that of none other.”

The Man journeyed again over land and sea. He went into crowded places and again upon the mountain top, but he did not find any flower whose perfume was strange to him. He became weary and footsore in his search, and finally made up his mind that no such plant as that which The Artist had mentioned existed. Once or twice he stumbled upon lurid blossoms which were unfamiliar, but when he examined them he found that they sprang from th*e very weeds of which he had worked so hard to keep his garden clear for 10, these many years. “I will go home, and I will not tend the garden any more,” he told himself, "for I could never be satisfied now unless I gain for it the perfume which The Artist says is the sweetest and rarest in the world."

Heart-weary and discouraged, The Man returned. He arrived in the night Before the sun rose he went out into the garden to take a last look at all the beautiful things he had planted there and tended through many years. He stood in their midst and told them that he had come to say good-by to them. He told them that they were good to look upon; that they had satisfied him for many a year, but that he had now come to the crossroads where he needed a flower that did not grow in his garden, and Without which the garden was of no avail. And even while he talked the rare and beautiful flowers about him began to lift their wonderful heads, for the east had confessed a flush, and one by one (quite ignoring The Man) they raised their radiant faces for the first kiss of the morning sun. The Man watched them in amazement. He had come forth to tell >them good-by forever, and one and all they had been "clothed upon” with a new loveliness, a new radiance, inhaling, as it were, the spirit of the newborn day. As The Man stood thus in the midst of his garden he was suddenly conscious of a new perfume. Over and above all the others it rose, clinging like a fine, sweet mist over the garden The Man had made. It penetrated his entire being, suffusing him with great joy. When he lifted his eyes, The Man saw that the small vine which he had often noticed clinging to the outside wall of his Garden of Life had borne a flower —a single blossom, whose petals radiated the myriad lights of mother-of-peari as it glistened in the morning sun —and he did not need to be told that the name of the flower w r as Love, nor that it was the same that he had sought over the length and breadth of the land, although he has never ceased to marvel that it blossomed there, within the reach of his very hands, upon a vine which he had frankly despised and often been tempted to cut down.

As the Man Stood Thus In the Midst of Hit Garden.