Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1899 — Holland’s Hyacinth Fields. [ARTICLE]

Holland’s Hyacinth Fields.

Holland is still the bulb grower of the world. Supremacy in hyacinths and tulips is the one distinction left w'hich gains a niche for Holland among the world powers. ,No one who is acquainted with the figures of the Dutch bulb trade and has watched the insinuation of the hyacinth into the most forbidding corners of English urban life will doubt that Haarlem’s industry is a world power. Ought not, then, every Hollander to be proud of Haarlem? Should not he take off his hat to every hyacinth bloom he passes? And if he is not skilled to bow with grace the flower will teach him, for the humility of natural beauty invariably saves the hyacinth from any arrogance of bearing. True, it has not the singular grace of the daffodil, which learns the lesson of humility and bends its head just at the crisis of its glory; still, the upright hyacinth, left to its own devices, is never stiff. Also, should not the Dutchman at every feast reserve one cup to toast the tulip—a handsomer cup than ever he will drink from? It is a pity that the Hollanders have not a canonizing church, for St. Hyacinthus would make an ideal patron, and Flower Show Monday at Haarlem might be his day. That is the one day when the natives seem to realize that they owe their living to these blossoms. Nearly everybody wears one somehow; bicycles, carriages and humans all bear the floral mark; they cannot be called decorated; the flowers ofteh hang discourteously reserved, still there is a sense of duty to it.— Saturday Review.