Chapter 9

Every flower has a well-known language of its own; many convey comparatively long expressions of emotion, both pleasing and the reverse, and the meaning of each may be qualified or increased by its union with others. In the language of flowers all at an early age are instructed. The meaning associated with each flower is universally understood, its name at once conveying its language as distinctly as though the whole of the sentence were spoken in so many words. Indeed many interesting, and even long conversations are carried on between a gentleman and lady through a floral medium.

A young lady, instead of entering into conversation or expressing her sentiments in words, may present a flower either in the first instance or by way of answer. A married lady receiving visitors has generally fresh flowers at hand, which she often separates to present one to the visitor.

The following are instances of language associated with flowers:--

Vista Rodo.--A plant bearing a little flower like a diamond in transparency and brilliancy, and exhaling from every green leaf a beautiful perfume.

"The stars in heaven thou makest to blush by the sweetness of thy breath."

"I deny not that they possess thy brilliancy, But thy fragrance they deplore. May I hope for the boon of thy lustre near me Through the journey of life, To teach me to be happy, To cultivate my admiration of the beautiful, To bid me seek the joys of home, And teach me the greatness of my Maker!"

Oronza.--A flower unknown to your planet. It is white, the centre studded with little spots in relief, so closely resembling turquoise and pearls that unless touched they might be mistaken for real stones placed on the flower.

"At sight of thee, malignity flies away and the spirits of peace and goodness surround me, encouraging me to all great and noble deeds, making me forget to look back on my folly, and bidding me gaze forward into the future and the realms of hope.

"You exalt me; you purify me; say you will part from me no more."

Mosca.--The moss rose.

...."Come to me, Thy virtues are more brilliant than precious stones; Thy breath exhales intoxicating perfume; Thy beauty is a continual feast. Tell me thy heart shall be my haven, To my bosom I will press thee, And thy leaves shall embrace me with their fragrant affection."

Each kind of rose has its separate language. Thus, Javellina, the single-leaf hedge-rose, is associated with lines indicative of "the sweet purity of youth." Angellina, the white rose, is associated with lines indicative of "gentle endurance and pure love;" and Orvee, the yellow rose, with lines indicative of "affection combined with jealousy."

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Some flowers have qualified, some disagreeable meanings attached to them.

No man, however nearly allied to a lady, or however great his cause for displeasure may be, is allowed to say to her anything unpleasant except through the medium of flowers.

The only exception is in favour of the husband, whose privilege is seldom used; not only because it is thought more civilised to use flowers as the medium on such occasions, but more especially because marriages are now so well assorted that occasion for complaint scarcely arises on either side.

At the marriage meetings flowers having the slightest disagreeable words attached to them are strictly forbidden.

As an example of flowers having a qualified or disagreeable import take the following:--

Ragopargee.--The white lily.

"Cold but truthful, and as constant as the drops of Mount Isione."

In a small recess of Mount Isione two drops of water, clear as crystal, constantly fall, having percolated the rock above. As soon as two drops have fallen two others succeed, two being the invariable number. The interval between the fall of each pair of drops is equal and scarcely perceptible.

These drops never cease to fall night or day, and they have already by this accumulation formed a lake at the base of the mountain.

Voulervole--Convolvulus.

"False allurements! Thy beauty is to please but for a day, Like the magnet it attracts us, And then thou wouldst make us weep By fading before our eyes.

"Go, fickle flower, For thou shalt not be mine Until more lasting; thou canst learn to be."

Mooreska.--Fuchsia.

"Thy beauty is dazzling; But, alas! its bloom will fade The nearer we approach. For thy external attractions find no echo within. I can never take thee to my bosom."

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Romeafee.--The pink lily. This flower is associated with excessive love of dress, and the language attached to it ends with the words.

"As glaring to the eye as Kiloom."

The gorgeous appearance of sunset is personified in poetical legends by a master spirit, called "Kiloom."

The colours of sunset are gaudy and vivid beyond measure, and cast intense hues on all objects. Our sunsets, though grand, are far from being so agreeably soothing as those in your planet, but they leave an after-glow, which gives light during the night when darkness would otherwise prevail.

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Flowers are profusely used in our great festivals. I collect a fête given to me on the occasion of an anniversary, when there appeared a cavalcade of one hundred camelopards, bearing each on its back a kiosk, in which was a beautiful woman. All the camelopards were united together, as it seemed to the eye, by wreaths of flowers, though in fact these concealed strong thongs, with which the animals were really secured. Each animal was attended by a swarthy native of the country whence it came.

XXV.

FLOWERS IMPROVED BY ELECTRICITY.

"Marry nature's gifts the one with the other, amalgamate sympathetic electricities in their due proportions, and give increased beauty to loveliness, even as ye give increased strength to iron and marble, by welding their particles into one imperishable mass."

We discovered the mode in which nature operates in the production of plants and flowers, and our discovery has enabled us to give them new forms and varied colours, to increase their natural odours and to endow them even with fragrance of which in their natural state they are devoid.

Enclosed in every seed is a portion of electricity, and on this depend, in the first instance, the life of the plant, its form and colour, its leaves and blossoms. If any crack or injury to the seed has allowed the electricity to escape, the growth of the plant is prevented.

When, after some time, the seed having been sown, its electricity has attracted a sufficient quantity of the electricity of the ground, and the two electricities are, as it were, married, their united heat and power force the seed to burst.

Part of the united electricity serves for the leaves, and when its supply is deficient the leaves wither and die, despite every effort to preserve them.

Another part serves to give form and impart colour to the plant. Green is the colour that the earth, in connection with the electricity of light, has the greatest tendency to generate.

In many plants, after the electricity has thrown off its principal strength in the leaves and blossoms, what remains sinks exhausted into the root, there to repose, and, like a child forsaken by its mother, the leaves become sickly and fade. When in due season the electricity again becomes invigorated by repose, and by union with the electricity of the ground, the united essences go forth again to seek the light and busy themselves in the reproduction of foliage and flowers.

The essence of the combined electricity having acquired additional power from the contact with the electricity of light and of the sun, is forced to the extremities and joints of the stem, where the forms of the flower are permanently developed and preserved.

The electricity concentrated or, rather, coagulated at the joints and extremities of the plant there forms hard gatherings, which, after being saturated with the electricity of light and of the sun, ripen and burst into flower.

There are, as you know, great resemblances in many of the operations of nature. From observing the mode in which electricity thus coagulates and forms gatherings or tumours in flower-plants, we acquired valuable knowledge, including the secret of the formation of gatherings or tumours of all kinds in the human body.

The sap of the plant is the repository or reservoir of the united electricities, from which every part of the flower is to be nourished.

PROCESS FOR CHANGING FORM.

This is an outline of our process when we would change the form of flowers:

A slip from a plant, according to the kind of flower desired, is placed in a flower-pot filled with mould, the bottom of which can be unscrewed and removed at pleasure.

As soon as the slip has taken root, and the smallest fibres have sprung from the stem of the plant, the form of the desired flower is made out of a piece of ravine metal as thin as a piece of silk.

This metal-flower, after immersion in a solution which attracts the particular electricity to be used, is enclosed in a hollow block of the same metal, corresponding to the flower form, from which it rises in a shape somewhat like that of a funnel, till it ends in a very fine point or orifice as fine and as hollow as the finest hair. This point is inserted in the root of the plant.

Underneath the metal-flower form is placed a bag of sympathetic electricity, and the mouth of the bag is so arranged as to fit closely round the form of the metal-flower in such a way that the electricity has no escape but into the hollow metal block and through its fine, hollow point. The metal point, previously to its insertion in the root of the plant, is prepared with a solution to prevent the escape of any of the electricity through its pores.

As soon as the bag is opened the electricity is attracted into the metal form, and having no other escape, proceeds instantaneously through the funnel and through the hair-tube into the plant. In doing this, it retains the form implanted by its contact with the metal model, and by the forced passage through which it has become married with another electricity.

As soon as it is attracted by the solution with which the inside of the metal is covered, a shock is produced which materially assists the operation, by causing the electricity to imprint itself with greater force and certainty on the embryo plant with which you will recollect the hair-point has been connected.

It is essential that the charge should be sufficiently strong to modify or overpower the electricity already existing in the plant, in order to change the form which this would otherwise take; but, at the same time, care is taken that the charge is not too powerful, for in that case, and particularly if an antipathetic electricity be employed, the flower would be instantly killed. The electricity is therefore applied in gentle proportions at first, and then the operation is repeated several times.

PRODUCTION OF COLOUR.

It is electricity that, as I have said, gives colour to plants. Their varied tints depend on the sympathy or attraction of their electricity to sun and light electricities. Particular parts of the plant, from the nature of their fibre, have the power to attract larger portions than others of the colouring electricities.

When it is wished to produce different colours in the flower other electricities are used, with or without those producing variety of form. The electricities for producing colours are contained in small pouches, as many in number as the colours we desire to produce. Then, being placed together at the base of the flower-pot, each on the particular part of the "flower form" which is to be affected, their orifices are opened and the contents of each one are instantaneously emitted.

Most plants are susceptible of every variety of colour; thus are produced roses, pink, blue, green, lilac, brown, fire-colour, and sun-colour, which last is a colour so brilliant that the eye that has long gazed upon it stands in need of repose.

Amongst the electricities for giving colours is sun electricity, received in different ways. Again, the electricities of some birds give lovely colours; and so does that of the gold-fish. Moss gives a colour resembling fire-sparks. Frogs produce a beautiful violet.

Where the flowers and leaves have not a decided perfume of their own, we can give a beautiful fragrance to either, though not to both on the same plant. To produce this result, we inoculate the plant with certain fragrant gases. Our dahlias, unlike yours, yield a highly fragrant and delightful perfume.

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The plants treated by us in these ways are fitly called flowers, presenting as they do a mass of blossoms and exhaling delicious perfumes. They act, mediately or immediately, on the concentrated light of the organization through the nerves of smell, as beautiful sounds through the medium of the ear, or as beautifully harmonised colours through the eye. You will recollect that a modification of concentrated light is supposed to be the link through which the soul communicates its impressions to the brain, on whose divisions it is made to act in electric forms.

Besides an infinite variety of flowers, we produce every variety of colour and perfume in the leaves of the evergreens which adorn our streets and habitations, emitting healthy and refreshing fragrance, increased by every movement of the wind.

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CREATION OF FORMS.

Not wholly unconnected with this subject is the creation of electric forms for amusement at a distance from the operator. This is effected by the aid of tubes made from the membranes covering the eyes of birds, which are invisible to the naked eye even when at a short distance from the observer.

In the mouth of one of these tubes, which spreads out slightly, is placed a small form made of grains of powder obtained from the coloured seeds of flowers, and, a bag of electricity being applied, the fluid rushes through the tube. Instantly, at the other end, appears the figure or form traced at the mouth, but of ordinary or gigantic stature, proportioned to the power or quantity of electricity employed.

The forms can be varied or changed at will, and have so life-like an appearance that I have seen persons go up to the supposed gentlemen or ladies and speak to them, and only discover that they were shadows when they have come up close to them, or when the operator has at will made them vanish.

I should tell you how our attention was first called to the subject of reproducing forms by electricity.

We had observed numberless instances in which copies of forms were reproduced by electricity, as in the case of pictures in water, reflections in mirrors, mirages, apparitions, and pictures in the air; and had noticed that lightning would frequently imprint, on substances like trees, pictures of surrounding objects. These appearances have, I believe, been observed even in your world.

SUN-FORCING.

There is a highly beautiful flower called Luania, a name of which the approximate translation is the _soirée_ or "assembly" flower. Its colours are most brilliant, but its blossom only lasts about ten hours. When that short term has expired, the leaves fall, and nothing remains but a small pod, containing seeds.

In the following year, but not before, the flower blossoms again, and falls in like manner.

The seeds of the Luania do not mature for three years,--that is to say, until after the flower has blossomed three times; but we have, however, the means of producing flowers from the seeds in three days.

The seeds are placed in handsome vases, which contain fine sand and some new goat's-milk, and are covered over with perforated zinc, taken from the great ravine, the metal having been previously prepared to attract the rays of the sun.

The vase, with the metal thus prepared, is exposed to the light of the sun, between the hours of seven and eight in the morning.

The power of the prepared metal is great, and so strongly attracts and retains heat, that it renders the surrounding atmosphere quite cold.

One hour in the sun is sufficient to bring leaves from the Luania. The metal covering is then removed, and the vases are placed under a forcing-glass, the power of which is doubled on the second day, and further increased on the third. The flowers then appear at once clad in all their brilliancy and beauty.

The forced flowers, like the natural blossoms, which they excel in beauty, live ten hours only, but they so far differ from them that their pods do not contain seeds.

The colours of the flowers are bright pink, golden, lilac, lilac striped with white, and a beautiful green striped with white gold. The leaves of this, instead of being green like the others, are of a coral colour mixed with purple blue.

The perfume of these flowers surpasses every other fragrance; it is most refreshing, and a lady will have no other for a _réunion_ when she can obtain this flower.

XXVI.

SONG OF ADMIRATION.

"The beautiful is an attribute of heavenly perfection.

"Give vent to your emotions in words, in flowers, in music, and above all in good and noble acts."

The enthusiastic admiration of the lover has modes of expression besides the graceful presentation of flowers, and the soul-stirring breathings of the harp.

The following, to which I have added the explanation of certain terms, conveys as nearly as may be the meaning of some verses addressed by a lover to the object of his admiration. Many of the expressions will probably be thought hyperbolical. You will, however, remember that our pulsation is more rapid than yours.

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Like Lertees[1] at sunrise, opening into life, are thine eyes;

Sparkling and darting like Zacostees[2] the most rare.

Their light overpowers as the air before a storm, when Raskutshi spreads his wings across the temples of his people.[3]

Soft as the Kamouska[4] thine eyes penetrate and search the soul with ingenuity exercised by Orestee[5] to find a treasure.

Sweet as the milk of the Meleeta[6] is thy breath.

Thy breasts are like the electricity of Turvee.[7]

Thy laugh is like the shooting of the stars,[8] silvery and wondrously charming.

Dangerous art thou, for thou allurest mankind from every pursuit, and, like to the electricity of the whale,[9] dost thou draw us far and near.

Then as the Martolooti[10] dost thou fascinate us to the spot.

Graceful as the Castrenka[11] move thine arms.

More playful than the Chilarti when it smiles,[12] and more luscious than the juice of the Tootmanyoso's fruit[13] is the balm of thy lips.

The charms thou displayest are like the perfume emitted by the everlasting gulf;[14]

Durable in their attraction as the Yurdzin-nod.[15]

As surely dost thou penetrate the heart as the venom of the serpent permeates the blood.

Precious as the fat on the serpent's head[16] is the marrow of thy bones.

Firm as the Mestua Mountain[17] is thy will.

In thy goodness thy maker must rejoice.

Thy constant love doth make me live many lives in one; a day seemeth a year, and a year but a day.

Rise, wet thy feet,[18] and onward let us go to Stainer's fount.[19]

There to calm our thirst before singing to our Maker's praise.

And even as that sweet source ever flows,

So may our lives flow to the end of time, as constant and as bright.

Then come to my arms, and twine thyself about me, and I will support thee with strength and power, as the Mountain Supporter[20] sustains the air-suspended cities of Montalluyah.

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EXPLANATION OF CERTAIN TERMS USED IN THE PRECEDING SONG OF ADMIRATION.

1. Lertees.--A lovely mountain spangled with transparent stones, which is so resplendent at sunrise that none can look at it without putting gauze before the eyes. Many of the stones were used to ornament the Mountain Supporter.

2. Zacostees.--Precious stones found near the tomb of a celebrated and beautiful woman, named Zacosta, whose loveliness, goodness, and varied talents, created for her many bitter enemies, and exposed her to cruel persecutions. She died heart-broken, and her tears are said to have been petrified into these precious stones called Zacostees which are greatly prized as ornaments for turbans and for ladies' bosoms.

Though reviled and persecuted, Zacosta suffered without a murmur, and rose superior to oft-renewed temptations, and to the bitter taunts of the many incarnate evil spirits who called her an idiot simply because, lovely and accomplished as she was, she patiently bore privations and sufferings when many were ready to pour riches into her lap. To the last she resisted the tempter, however fascinating the form he took, and never lost faith to the day when she calmly closed a life in which she had so greatly suffered.

The legend adds that Zacosta was wafted by angels to one of the celestial stars, there to dwell in love, peace, and joy, and that she daily prays for the alleviation of the sufferings of her persecutors, doomed to pass through bitter ordeals, so pure and magnanimous is her spirit.

It should be added, that according to the prevalent belief, the higher order of spirits, those of the truly good, blessed in their own celestial spheres with every joy, occupy themselves by seeking to benefit others in the nether worlds. Their prayers are necessarily unselfish, unless we regard as selfish the joys, to them great indeed, which result from the delight of doing good.

One of the leading principles of the system which I gave to Montalluyah, namely, the promotion of those possessing superior talents, goodness and industry, was intended to imitate the mode in which, according to our belief, the spirits of the good are elevated to superior ranks of spheres according to the manner in which they pass through their several progressive states.

In Montalluyah slander is regarded with horror. A person of either sex who slandered a woman, and even one who gave credence to a slander without careful investigation, would be severely punished and condemned to wear "the dress of shame," on which would be exposed the nature of the offence, and the base motives of the traducer.

In the cases of slander that occurred at the beginning of my reign the offence was generally traced to envy, to the inferiority of the slanderers to the standard of their victims whom they sought to reduce to their own level, rarely to a desire for good.

Our horror of slanderers had been increased by the persecutions which numbers of virtuous persons like Zacosta had suffered from the malevolent; the very anxiety of the innocent to repel accusations having formerly been looked upon by our hot-blooded people as evidence of guilt. Many had preferred to suffer in silence rather than seem to give life and consistency to a charge by their efforts to repel it.

We have a saying in Montalluyah that to attack beauty and goodness is to attack Heaven itself, from whose attributes they are derived.

3. Raskutshi.--Supposed to be the king of the air, and ruler of all the zephyrs and spirits of the region. According to our poetical legends Raskutshi comes near the Earth when angry, and his advent is followed by a terrific storm. The air preceding certain storms in our climate has a peculiar effect in creating a species of torpor. It is then supposed that "Raskutshi spreads his wings over the temples of his people."