Isn't everybody better
for lavishing love? And no one merely likes these; whoever cares at all
loves entirely. We always take and give resemblances or sympathies from
any close connection, and so these are in their way a type of their
lovers. What virtue is in them to distil the shadow of the great pines,
that wave layer after layer with a grave rhythm over them,
into this delicate tint, I wonder. They have so decided an
individuality,--different there from hot-house belles;--fashion strips
us of our characteristics"----
"You needn't turn to me for illustration of exotics," said I.
He threw me a cluster, half-hidden in its green towers, and went on,
laying one by one and bringing out little effects.
"The sweetest modesty clings to them, which Alphonse Karr denies to the
violet, so that they are almost out of place in a drawing-room; one
ought to give them there the shelter of their large, kind leaves."
"Hemlock's the only wear," said Louise.
"Or last year's scarlet blackberry triads. Vines together," he
suggested.
"But sometimes they forget their nun-like habit," she added, "put on a
frolicsome mood, and clamber out and flush all the deep ruts of the
carriage-road in Follymill woods, you remember.
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