I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the occasion.  Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a couple of damasks.  I suppose all this went through my mind, for this was what I went on to say:—­]

I love the damask rose best of all.  The flowers our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best.  If the Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly vicious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I’ll tell you what drugs he would have to take and how he would have to use them.  Imagine yourself reading a number of the Houyhnhnms Gazette, giving an account of such an experiment.

“MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY.

“The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly.  The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking.  His countenance expressed the utmost degree of ferocity and cunning.

“The operator took a handful of budding lilac-leaves, and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held them towards the creature.  Its expression changed in an instant,—­it drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to seize them with its soft split hoofs.  Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded to tie a blue hyacinth to the end of the pole and held it out towards the wild animal.  The effect was magical.  Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them to the flower.  After this it was perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, without showing the least disposition to strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder.”

That will do for the Houyhnhnms Gazette.—­Do you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers?  Did you ever hear of a poet who did not talk about them?  Don’t you think a poem, which, for the sake of being original, should leave them out, would be like those verses where the letter a or e or some other is omitted?  No,—­they will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new.  Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?  Look at Nature.  She never wearies of saying over her floral pater-noster.  In the crevices of Cyclopean walls,—­in the dust where men lie, dust also,—­on the mounds that bury huge cities, the Birs Nemroud and the Babel-heap,—­still that same sweet prayer and benediction.  The Amen! of Nature is always a flower.