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Overland Monthly

January, 1906

Vol. XLVII

UNIVERSITY

OF THE

OF

La Marque rose.

WHAT THE ROSE CAN DO

BY JESSIE JULIET KNOX

"But soft! what light through yonder window breaks."

No. 1

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T

HE old saying that "when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window" surely could not apply in California, for so beautiful are the doorways, touched by the artist-Naturethat poverty, real poverty, cannot

come in, and so exquisite are the windows, and so rare are they with perfumed loveliness, that Cupid could neither fly in nor out, but just remain in the delicious shelter of its oral radiance. It is not such a hardship in this summer land if, for any reason, one must remain indoors, for the air is so balmy that one may always have some windows

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All-all are here, but it is conceded by every one that the queen -the royal queen of window and doorway, is the rose. Of every name and hue, and in vistas of vivid color, they All the air with their all-permeating fragrance, full full of subtle and romantic suggestion. Here the blood red rose, the queen of love, and all her royal retinue, glow beneath the crystalline sunlight.

but here the floral goddess is more lavish of her beauties in April and May than at any other time, and it is then that the windows and doorways burst into masses of color and bloom and fragrance.

In their leafy bowers the wild- receptions given to Mark Antony, birds nest, feeling secure in their cloistered sanctity, and one may always be thrilled with the melody of their songs.

the grand salon was carpeted with roses, eighteen inches deep-a votive offering of the bloom of Love.

There are all kinds of flowers over doors and windows-the passion flower and clematis, with their starry blossoms; the omnipresent and abundant smilax, with its tender ropes of green; clinging ivy; the heavy, fragrant beauty of heliotrope, which in this climate often shades a veranda fifteen feet from the ground. Hydrangeas, which grow to magnificent height and size; fuschia and ivy geranium; our oldfashioned friends, honey suckle and jessamine.

The legends of history interweave the rose with the palmy days of Rome and Greece. The classic rev

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els were incomplete without giving it a prominent position. The ancient Romans called the white rose the "earth star," and decorations in which it prevailed always gave a hint of silence. Also in the fabulous

Nero expended a hundred thousand dollars for roses to decorate a single feast, and the classic laurel a chaplet of roses, crowning poets, orators and victors.

And so, life passed in a perfect climate, where love and gentleness have draped window and doorway with their perfumed beauty and have hung their satin banners upon the outer walls, must partake of their sweetness and purity to some extent, and receive the impress of such environment. The poetic element is not wanting in any of these rose garlanded entrances, for here beauty is a birth-right, and her kingdom a perennial one. This floral beauty is far superior to architectural, for it grows in silence, and is fashioned without sound of the hammer.

Only one thing we lack, if lack it can be called. We have no "last rose of summer."

Perhaps for that reason we may sometimes fail to appreciate the completeness and perfection of our blossom-crowned doorways and windows in this world of roses.

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