Are we exaggerating this astonishing rise, development, and spread of the chrysanthemum?  As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt, or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovely head.  But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nations and times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held its own as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of sentiment.  But here comes a flaunting thing with no desirable perfume, looking as if it were cut with scissors out of tissue-paper, but capable of taking infinite varieties of color, and growing as big as a curtain tassel, that literally captures the world, and spreads all over the globe, like the Canada thistle.  The florists have no eye for anything else, and the biggest floral prizes are awarded for the production of its eccentricities.  Is the rage for this flower typical of this fast and flaring age?

The Drawer is not an enemy to the chrysanthemum, nor to the sunflower, nor to any other gorgeous production of nature.  But it has an old-fashioned love for the modest and unobtrusive virtues, and an abiding faith that they will win over the strained and strident displays of life.  There is the violet:  all efforts of cultivation fail to make it as big as the peony, and it would be no more dear to the heart if it were quadrupled in size.  We do, indeed, know that satisfying beauty and refinement are apt to escape us when we strive too much and force nature into extraordinary display, and we know how difficult it is to get mere bigness and show without vulgarity.  Cultivation has its limits.  After we have produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the most precious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our admiration put a limit to her size.  There being, then, certain laws that ultimately fetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable that the chrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its splendor; that fashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret heart of love; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its capacity of shyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty; the rose, with that odor—­of the first garden exhaled and yet kept down through all the ages of sin —­will become again the fashion, and be more passionately admired for its temporary banishment.  Perhaps the poet will then come back again and sing.  What poet could now sing of the “awful chrysanthemum of dawn”?

THE RED BONNET

The Drawer has no wish to make Lent easier for anybody, or rather to diminish the benefit of the penitential season.  But in this period of human anxiety and repentance it must be said that not enough account is made of the moral responsibility of Things.  The doctrine is sound; the only difficulty is in applying it.  It can, however, be illustrated by a little story, which is here confided to the reader in the