THE FLOWER MISSION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Mr. Brooke Lambert's eminently true and practical re- marks on the " Flower Mission " in your last issue lead me to offer you a suggestion which is the result of an East-London experience in window-garden shows.
An " all-a'-blowing-and-a'-growing" movement like that which Miss Stanley advocates is one which I believe will seriously in- jure the cause which she has at heart. She wishes the poor to appreciate the influence of flowers upon their hearts and minds,— then she must be content to let it be taught patiently by example and word-of-mouth, especially among children and in hospitals. Merely to distribute bouquets is casting pearls before swine, is profligate. They will not be influenced by what they do not understand, and you run a risk of lowering their estimate of flowers by letting them see you cart them in wholesale, as if they were so much soil that you were lending out of your garden.
Feeling this to be true, I have devoted some time to lecturing simply and plainly, where I was allowed, in town or country, about the flowers and their work, trying to teach them to under- stand and care for what flowers they had, and I have fought shy of unscrupulous distribution and much competitive exhibition.
The most disheartening feature of the whole affair is, that the rich and the mighty—the very people who so generously help one to get up these shows—not only, as a rule, know nothing about the education that one is aiming at, but are on pretty much the same footing with their azaleas as they are with their sweets and dessert. If they were not, we should find that "my lady" would not part lightly, and without words of counsel and instruction, with her pots and bouquets. By all means let us have a "Flower Mission " for all classes, but one capable of more lasting result than the mere satisfaction of the appetite for possession.—I am,
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