I hope it will squeak.
Daffodils
The confession-book, I suppose, has disappeared. It is twenty
years since I have seen one. As a boy I told some inquisitive
owner what was my favourite food (porridge, I fancy), my
favourite hero in real life and in fiction, my favourite virtue
in woman, and so forth. I was a boy, and it didn't really matter
what were my likes and dislikes then, for I was bound to outgrow
them. But Heaven help the journalist of those days who had to
sign his name to opinions so definite! For when a writer has said
in print (as I am going to say directly) that the daffodil is his
favourite flower, simply because, looking round his room for
inspiration, he has seen a bowl of daffodils on his table and
thought it beautiful, it would be hard on him if some confession-
album-owner were to expose him in the following issue as already
committed on oath to the violet. Imaginative art would become
impossible. Fortunately I have no commitments, and I may affirm
that the daffodil is, and always has been, my favourite flower.
Many people will put their money on the rose, but it is
impossible that the rose can give them the pleasure which the
daffodil gives them, just as it is impossible that a thousand
pounds can give Rockefeller the pleasure which it gives you or
me. For the daffodil comes, not only before the swallow comes--
which is a matter of indifference, as nobody thinks any the worse
of the swallow in consequence--but before all the many flowers of
summer; it comes on the heels of a flowerless winter.
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