1. CHAPTER I.
“Thou shalt not kill.”
“Love your enemies.”
“Father, forgive them: they know not what they do.”
Christ.
The early spring of 1861 brought to bloom, besides
innumerable violets and jessamines, a strange, enormous,
and terrible flower.
This was the blood-red flower of war, which grows
amid thunders; a flower whose freshening dews are
blood and hot tears, whose shadow chills a land, whose
odors strangle a people, whose giant petals droop downward,
and whose roots are in hell.
It is a species of the great genus, sin-flower, which
is so conspicuous in the flora of all ages and all countries,
and whose multifarious leafage and fruitage so
far overgrow a land that the violet, or love-genus, has
often small chance to show its quiet blue.
The cultivation of this plant is an expensive business,
and it is a wonder, from this fact alone, that there
should be so many fanciers of it. A most profuse and
perpetual manuring with human bones is absolutely
necessary to keep it alive, and it is well to have these
powdered, which can be easily done by hoofs of cavalry-horses
and artillery-wheels, not to speak of the usual
method of mashing with cannon-balls. It will not
grow, either, except in some wet place near a stream
of human blood; and you must be active in collecting
your widows' tears and orphans' tears and mothers'
tears to freshen the petals with in the mornings.
It requires assiduous working; and your labor-hire
will be a large item in the expense, not to speak of the
amount disbursed in preserving the human bones alive
until such time as they may be needed, for, I forgot to
mention, they must be fresh, and young, and newly-killed.
It is, however, a hardy plant, and may be grown in
any climate, from snowy Moscow to hot India.
It blooms usually in the spring, continuing to flower
all summer until the winter rains set in: yet in some
instances it has been known to remain in full bloom
during a whole inclement winter, as was shown in a
fine specimen which I saw the other day, grown in
North America by two wealthy landed proprietors,
who combined all their resources of money, of blood,
of bones, of tears, of sulphur and what not, to make
this the grandest specimen of modern horticulture,
and whose success was evidenced by the pertinacious
blossoms which the plant sent forth even amid the hostile
rigors of snow and ice and furious storms. It is
supposed by some that seed of this American specimen
(now dead) yet remain in the land; but as for this author
(who, with many friends, suffered from the unhealthy
odors of the plant), he could find it in his heart
to wish fervently that these seed, if there be verily any,
might perish in the germ, utterly out of sight and life
and memory and out of the remote hope of resurrection,
forever and ever, no matter in whose granary they
are cherished!
But, to return.
It is a spreading plant, like the banyan, and continues
to insert new branch-roots into the ground, so
as sometimes to overspread a whole continent. Its
black-shadowed jungles afford fine cover for such wild
beasts as frauds and corruptions and thefts to make
their lair in; from which, often, these issue with ravening
teeth and prey upon the very folk that have planted
and tended and raised their flowery homes!
Now, from time to time, there have appeared certain
individuals (wishing, it may be, to disseminate and
make profit upon other descriptions of plants) who
have protested against the use of this war-flower.
Its users, many of whom are surely excellent men,
contend that they grow it to protect themselves from
oppressive hailstorms, which destroy their houses and
crops.
But some say the plant itself is worse than any hailstorm;
that its shades are damp and its odors unhealthy,
and that it spreads so rapidly as to kill out and
uproot all corn and wheat and cotton crops. Which the
plant-users admit; but rejoin that it is cowardly to allow
hailstorms to fall with impunity, and that manhood
demands a struggle against them of some sort.
But the others reply, fortitude is more manly than
bravery, for noble and long endurance wins the shining
love of God; whereas brilliant bravery is momentary,
is easy to the enthusiastic, and only dazzles the
admiration of the weak-eyed since it is as often shown
on one side as the other.
But then, lastly, the good war-flower cultivators say,
our preachers recommend the use of this plant, and
help us mightily to raise it in resistance to the hailstorms.
And reply, lastly, the interested other-flower men,
that the preachers should preach Christ; that Christ
was worse hailed upon than anybody, before or since;
that he always refused to protect himself, though fully
able to do it, by any war-banyan; and that he did,
upon all occasions, not only discourage the resort to
this measure, but did inveigh against it more earnestly
than any thing else, as the highest and heaviest crime
against Love — the Father of Adam, Christ, and all of
us.
Friends and horticulturists, cry these men, stickling
for the last word, if war was ever right, then
Christ was always wrong; and war-flowers and the
vine of Christ grow different ways, insomuch that no
man may grow with both!
