Fernery

“ The end of the room opened into a fernery, in which were growing tall palms and whole miniature forests of maidenhair, kept moist by sparkling fountains that fell with a plash, plash, into marble basins. Birds were twitting and flitting about behind a wire netting, so slight and carefully concealed as to be scarcely perceptible.
No footman was allowed to enter this ladies' paradise; two maids, in their soft black dresses and snowy caps, were moving about arranging a table for the countess to serve tea upon. ”

“ Trafford hesitated; she hardly liked to disturb Fern’s mind, and yet she wished to put her on her guard.
“You see, Fern,” she answered, with assumed lightness, “we are poor people—very poor people; we have to work for our bread, and to be content with simple fare; but my young cousin Erle is rich—he will be his uncle’s heir one day, and, no doubt, he will marry some rich, handsome girl. All the world is before him; he has only to look round him and choose, like the prince in a fairy story. You may be sure there is some gay young princess waiting for him somewhere. Are you cold, my darling?” ”

“ Never dig up more on one day than you can plant during the next, and above all remember that if a fern is worth tramping the countryside for, it is worth careful planting, and that the moral remarks made about the care in setting out of roses [Pg 201] apply with double force to the handling of delicate wild flowers and ferns.
Good luck to your knoll, Mary Penrose, and to your fern fence, if that fancy pleases you. May the magic of fern seed fill your eyes and let you see visions, the goodly things of heart's desire, when, all being accomplished, you pause and look at the work of your hands. ”

“ For in the glen cool waters crisp over cold stones and the breeze sighs up stream and fans you as you sit on the brink of the pool and lean your head against the ledge from whose crannies drip the fairy fronds of the rock fern.
These are but little fellows of our [Pg 119] fern world, and the magic which distills from their fern seed is no doubt less potent than that from greater ferns, but added to the witch-hazel glamour it makes brook magic which will initiate you into many mysteries of the pasture world if you are but patient. ”

“ The river from the waterfall, which I have before spoken of, ran within fifty yards of our feet in a deep ravine, the sides of which were more thickly covered with fern-trees than I ever saw elsewhere. I think that the glowing terms in which many speak of the ferns are not borne out by their general appearance; it is only when seen from above that they are such surpassingly beautiful objects; seen from below I do not think they are equal in beauty to the generality of palms. ”

“ I rush out in a high state of frenzy, and, taking refuge in the next-door neighbor’s, inquire for some stockings. Whereupon the clerk inquires (of the wrong customer,) “What price I wish to pay?” Of course, I am not so verdant as to be caught in that trap; and, teetotally disgusted with the entire institution of shopping, I drag my weary limbs into Taylor’s new saloon, to rest.
Bless me! what a display of gilding, and girls, and gingerbread! what a heap of mirrors! There’s more than one Fanny Fern in the world. ”

“ There came a thoughtful man Searching Nature's secrets far and deep; From a fissure in a rocky steep He withdrew a stone o'er which there ran Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, Leafage, veining, fibers clear and fine, And the fern's life lay in every line! ”

“ The charm of her fern-book is as irresistible and pervading as is the charm of nature itself. This gifted and enthusiastic naturalist knows the ferns literally 'like a book,' and her book makes the first lesson of the novice in the lore of fern-life an easy and a delightful task."--New York Mail and Express.
"This is a notably thorough little volume. The text is not voluminous, and even with its many full-page illustrations the book is small; but brevity, as we are glad to see so many writers on nature learning, is the first of virtues in this field.... ”

“ There little ferns grow tall and big ferns grow very tall. And sunbeams and shadows are among them before gray-light-time. It is the same place where the man that wears gray neckties and is kind to mice did dig up little ferns to make fern wishes to the fairies when I put letters in the moss-box by the old log. But now we dig not up little ferns here. We find them in another place. We have feels the fairies would like it, and these ferns grow there for the pensée girl with the far-away look in her eyes. ”

“ Haggard—whom, perhaps, one might describe as a country gentleman by profession and a novelist by accident—suggestive of the literary man. Literature! We talked of gardening and flowers over the dinner table; learnt how he had brought many of the ferns in his fern-house three thousand miles—carrying them on mules overland and in canoes down the rivers from tropical Mexico. Some of these ferns are curious, by the way. There is one the leaves of which are five or six feet long, and a curious spotted species which grows on the ledges of rocks, in shape resembling a diminutive cart-wheel. ”

“ He haunts the quieter streets of the West End, and when a woman alone meets him late at night, she will do well to make for the nearest policeman, the proper method being to ask the fern-seller to carry the ferns home for her: a policeman will doubtless be encountered on the way. I remember a fern-seller, who accosted me once in Portman Square. It was about six o’clock in the evening; I told the man that I wanted no ferns; he followed me, rumbling abuse which I could hardly hear. As it happened, I was looking for lodgings, and stopped at a likely house in Portman Street. ”

“ It could be torn down in an hour if there was any need.”
“Ay, sir, that’s the way you take it over such things. That there garden ought to be turned into a drilling-ground; you know it ought.”
“If there does come any need for it, the garden can go,” said Roy, “but not until the very last.”
“That’s right, sir. Only, if we’re besieged, it will have to go. Now, let me see—that makes nine buff coats, and one more’s ten, for Farmer Raynes’s lot. Ought to give the farmer something a bit smarter, oughtn’t I, as he’ll expect to be a sergeant, won’t he?” ”

“ There is nothing frightful, or dangerous, or disagreeable about the journey, even to ladies not accustomed to riding; and there is very much that is new, strange, and wonderful to Americans or Europeans. Especially you will be delighted with the great variety and beauty of the ferns, which range from minute and delicate species to the dark and grand fronds of the tree-fern, which rises in the more elevated region to a height of twenty feet, and whose stalk has sometimes a diameter of three or four feet. ”

“ FERN.—Among Celtic and Germanic nations the Fern was formerly considered a sacred and auspicious plant. Its luck-bringing power was not confined to one species, but belonged to the tribe in general, dwelling, however, in the fullest perfection in the seed, the possessor of which could wish what he would, and the Devil would be obliged to bring it to him. In Swabia, they say that Fern-seed brought by the Devil between eleven and twelve on Christmas night enables a man to do as much work as twenty or thirty ordinary men. ”

“ And while he wrote poems, tragedies, histories, epigrams and court entertainments, his hard shrewd head was busily and most successfully employed in making his fortune.
He speculated in the funds, traded with America, and for years was a victualling contractor for armies. At Ferney, “l’auberge de l’Europe,” as he was pleased to call it, he received men and women of every sort of celebrity; he corresponded with kings, queens, princes, philosophers, with the Empress Catherine of Russia, and the Pope Benedict. An active life, truly, and one strangely occupied and organised. ”

“ But in later summer, judging by my own experience, the Lady Fern loses much of its delicacy. Many of its fronds become disfigured and present a rather blotched and coarse appearance.
This seems strange in view of the fact that the plant is called by Lowe, a well-known English writer, the "Queen of Ferns," and that it is one of the few ferns to which we find reference in literature. Scott pays it the compliment, rarely bestowed upon ferns, of mentioning it by name :
"Where the copse wood is the greenest. ”

“ On an ordinary walk of an hour or two through the fields and woods, the would-be fern student can familiarize himself with anywhere from ten to fifteen of the ferns described in this book. During a summer holiday in an average locality he should learn to know by sight and by name from twenty-five to thirty ferns, while in a really good neighborhood the enthusiast who is willing to scour the surrounding country from the tops of the highest mountains to the depths of the wildest ravines may hope to extend his list into the forties. ”

“ Of course it is.”
“And this line—Oh, I can’t explain it, Rifle, can you?”
“Course he can’t, sir, nor you nayther. ’Tain’t to be done. I knowed it were a ’maginary line when you said we war crossing it. But just you look here, sir: ’bout our garden and farm, over which I hope the master weant be disappointed, but I know he will, for I asks you young gents this—serusly, mind, as gents as has had your good eddication and growed up scollards—How can a man make a garden in a country where everything is upside down?”
“But it isn’t upside down, Sam; it’s only different,” said Norman. ”

“ High up on the lonely Ferner, near her stony father, once more sits the outcast, solitary child of man--spell-bound, as it were, like a part of the dizzy heights from which she looks down on the little world below, in which no space could be found for the large and alien heart that had matured in the wilderness among the glacier-storms. Men have hunted and driven her forth, and that has been fulfilled that her dream foretold, the mountain has adopted her as its child. ”

“ Fern never to jump a judgment, of a town, from a bird's-eye view out of a car window, I should quarrel with Harrisburg, situated in that gem of a valley, for resting so satisfied with nature's work, as to ignore any adornment of art, as well as with some other places near, and for the same reason. ”

“ This tour of inspection, which occupied nearly the whole day, proved very interesting to Fern Fenwick. With her note-book in hand, and her keen eyes on the alert to catch every salient point, she kept our hero busy answering a host of questions. It was a long, happy day for him! To sit so near her, to look into her smiling eyes, to listen to the musical tones of her voice, to answer her swiftly spoken questions, to respond to the pressure of her gloved hand upon his arm as she directed his attention to some particular object ”

“ There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare, beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can see the ferns! I can see the sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now, as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils ”

“ Bonner, of the New York Ledger, gave Fanny Fern, who had never been out of sight of America, $100 a column for her stupid trash, what he would give her, Miss Briar, who had crossed the big pond, when she touched pen to paper! Fanny Fern, indeed! Humph!”
Lovely creatures! I adore the whole sex. I always prefer hotels, ferry boats, and omnibusses, where they predominate, and abound; how courteous they are to each other, in case of a squeeze! ”

“ I hear, Comte, that you were attacked by one of my officers and his companions, here, close to my palace gates. Is it true?”
Francis shrugged his shoulders nearly to his ears with a half contemptuous smile upon his lips.
“Oh, a mere nothing,” he said; “a little sword-play.”
“A mere nothing!” cried Henry fiercely. “An insult to one of my guests a mere nothing!”
“Oh, don’t speak of it,” replied Francis, laughing. “I was not surprised.”
“You amaze me, sir!” cried the King.
“Indeed, Sire? Why, we always knew in France that there is nothing an Englishman loves better than to fight. ”

“ Happily the Lady Fern is common in many parts of the United Kingdom. Often it is to be found growing surprisingly near to towns, though its pretty green foliage makes a strong appeal to the eye of those vandals who go about uprooting every fern which they see. It is of easy culture in the garden. ”

“ Whether upon such a supposition or case as is now usually made (viz. the king will not discharge his trust, but is bent or seduced to un-bend religion) , subjects may take arms and resist? and Whether that case is now?’ Cambridge, 1642, 4to (2nd ed. Oxford, 1643) , ‘with an epistle to all the misse-led people of this land.’ Having thus declared himself, Ferne was obliged to abandon his living, and retire to Oxford for safety. ”

“ Williamson's little volume on the "Ferns of Kentucky," we have no book with sufficient text and illustrations within the reach of the brains and purse of the average fern-lover. In England one finds books of all sizes and prices on the English ferns, while our beautiful American ferns are almost unknown, owing probably to the lack of attractive and inexpensive fern literature. ”

“ I walked out one morning to Ferney in order to visit the chateau of Voltaire and to do hommage to the memory of that great man, the benefactor of the human race. It was he who gave the mortal blow to superstition and to the power of the clergy. It is the fashion for priests, Ultras and Tories to rail against him, but I judge him by his works and the effect of his works. His memory is held in reverence by the inhabitants of Ferney as their father and benefactor. He spent his whole fortune in acts of the most disinterested charity ”