3-070-707 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Maiden Meditation, 1881. 'A fanciful superstition has ascribed to the plucking and counting of the petals of a flower, with some mystical interpretation of their number - which every botanist knows to be the strict result of scientific laws - the means of ascertaining what some young ladies would like to know. "He loves me - loves me not"...it would be much better for her peace of mind, if she would let the flower alone...and if she would forget that troublesome question..."In maiden meditation,"...but not exactly "fancy-free," is the pensive young woman, evidently of high birth and breeding, seated on the stone bench...beside the margin of the placid lake...thinking too deeply of the problem of her life's affections. We are not disposed, however, to believe that she is, like some ignorant country girl, actually intent upon the foolish experiment to which we have alluded; she...has too much intellect...for any silly trick of that kind; it is more likely that her fingers are idly busy, in mere absence of mind, with a mechanical operation that is far from the subject of her thoughts. Still, we cannot but find it suggestive and significant of that particular theme of feminine anxiety, which may be supposed to engage her solitary meditations'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.