The Cheyenne Daily Leader

IN THE FRENCH CEMETERIES.

That Favorite Emblem, the Everlasting Flower, Superseded by the Glass Bead.

The everlasting flower, which used to be the favorite emblem of mourning in the French cemeteries, has now been almost superseded by the glass bead. At the recent festival of the dead, to every person who carried a wreath of immortelles to the cemetery a hundred carried wreaths of beads. Those who along the shores of the Mediterranean gather the everlasting flowers to be sent to Paris must be sorely tried by this change of custom. There is a little town called Ollioules, near Toulon, whose inhabitants, about 3,500 in number, have for many years earned their living by collecting the everlasting flowers on the sun scorched hills and preparing them for commerce. Care must be taken to pick them in the bud, for if the inflorescence is advanced the seeds will ripen afterwards, and the so called flower, which botanists describe very differently, will fall to pieces. There is still a certain demand for immortelles in Paris, for there are workshops in the Roquette quarter, where women are constantly employed in making them into wreaths, crosses, etc. This is usually done by fastening the heads of the flowers upon a foundation of tightly packed straw.

But, as I have already stated, it is the bead wreath that is now a la mode. The change is not one for the better. The immortelle, although it is one of nature's slim flowers, is, like the amaranth, a poetic emblem of eternity. That it decays, those who went to the cemeteries on All Saints' or All Souls' had ample evidence, 'but it will last a few years without looking very shabby. It, therefore, imposes no great tax or expense upon mourners to put a fresh wreath over the old one as the latter wears out. The bead wreath is without beauty and without any of that association of poetic and religious idea which gives an emblematic value. It is simply an economical expedient: glass beads "do not wear out, and when they are strung upon wire that does not rust "they remain where they are placed year after year, quite unchanged by wind and weather.

The French are practical people, and they appear to have come to the conclusion that the best emblem of immortality to put upon a tomb is made of glass and tin. The reasoning may be sound, but the taste is detestable. The bead wreath is a lamentable invention, on a par with that of the metallic flower which is to be seen in a pot on many a grave in the Paris cemeteries. The French are undoubtedly a nation of highly cultivated taste; but their decorative sense has an inherent tendency to break out into vulgarity and tawdriness. We see this in their rococo buildings, like the Grand Opera house, where unity of design and nobleness of proportion have been utterly sacrificed to the flashy adornment that the crowd mistakes for art. And yet there is no country in the world that contains so many superb examples of pure architectural taste as France.—Paris Cor. Boston Transcript.