A garden rosary . edthe mild, inscrutable faces of the long-haired, white-draped priests, maneuver-ing through the labyrinthine celebration:as I listened to the choir, their voices ris-ing and falling unaided by an organ, Iwas overcome by the ponderousness andintricacy of the institution. Such ritualsare never the direct fruit of any one mans A GARDEN ROSARY 17 invention. They are the composite re-sult of centuries of human aspiration andendeavor. Like an old tapestry — wovenby one generation: worn, mended, andrewoven by succeeding generations: like aconsummately fruity pudding, into whichhave
A garden rosary . edthe mild, inscrutable faces of the long-haired, white-draped priests, maneuver-ing through the labyrinthine celebration:as I listened to the choir, their voices ris-ing and falling unaided by an organ, Iwas overcome by the ponderousness andintricacy of the institution. Such ritualsare never the direct fruit of any one mans A GARDEN ROSARY 17 invention. They are the composite re-sult of centuries of human aspiration andendeavor. Like an old tapestry — wovenby one generation: worn, mended, andrewoven by succeeding generations: like aconsummately fruity pudding, into whichhave been stirred half a hundred mysteri-ous ingredients, producing a whole un-like any of them, and yet incorporatingeven the slightest. Of course no institution is simple, andneither is any individual: all are sjiip-pets and waste of old ancestral yet the sense of an elaborate spiritualnetwork which came to me so vividly thatmorning always recurs when I inhale therich, elusive aroma of the l8 A GARDEN ROSARY June i h, the modesty^ the ineffablemodesty of the lily of the valleyas it hides among the leaves!As one slips one*s fingers down its slenderstem and pulls it up and out from itssmooth sheath, it hangs its head — notlimply hut shyly, in exquisite have you ever noticed, when it ispicked and placed, perhaps with scatter-ing violets and appropriate greenery in acrystal vase, how instantly that aura ofvirginity vanishes? It is just as dainty inits little frilled skirts, hut there is a sophis-tication in its laciness, an elahorate fanci-ness hoth in its spreading network of greenand white and in its perfume, which,so delicate in the sweet out of doors, emitsan artificial piquancy in the warmth ofthe house. Charming, hut no longer in theleast timid, it ceases to he the Lucy of aWordsworth idyll, and is the consciouslychaste Madame de Mortsauf, that Lys A GARDEN ROSARY 19 dans la Vallee too virtuous to he pure,consummately and eternally e
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishe, booksubjectflowers
