Doctor Geddes made me spend my days in the garden that Schmetz had
labored upon with such loving-kindness, and that in consequence was
become a marvel of bloom and scent. Every butterfly in South
Carolina must have visited that garden. I hadn't known there were
that many butterflies in the world. All the florist-shop windows in
New York, that I had once paused before with envy and longing, were
stinted and poor and pale before the living, out-o'-doors wonder of
it. Florist shops haven't any bees, nor birds, nor butterflies, nor
trees that wave their green branches at you like friendly hands.
A flowering vine festooned the marble Love, and one great scarlet
spray of bloom flamed upon his marble torch, "so lyrically," Miss
Martha Hopkins said, that she was moved to write a poem about it. I
thought it a very nice poem, and I said so, when she read it to us.
But Doctor Geddes, who doesn't care for poetry, except Robert
Burns's, rubbed his nose.
"Oh, well, your grandmother and your aunts used to make
antimacassars and wall-pockets and paper flowers," he ruminated.
"Why shouldn't you make poetry if you feel like it?"
"You are to be pitied, Richard," said Miss Martha, with crushing
charity.
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