A Strange Experience.
Josephine Pollard.
They took the little London girl from out the city street
To where the grass was growing green, the birds were singing sweet;
And everything along the road so filled her with surprise,
The look of wonder fixed itself within her violet eyes.
The breezes ran to welcome her; they kissed her on each cheek,
And tried in every way they could their ecstasy to speak,
Inviting her to romp with them, and tumbling up her curls,
Expecting she would laugh or scold, like other little girls.
But she did not; no, she could not; for this crippled little child
Had lived within a dingy court where sunshine never smiled,
And for weary, weary days and months the little one had lain
Confined within a narrow room, and on a couch of pain.
The out-door world was strange to her—the broad expanse of sky,
The soft, green grass, the pretty flowers, the stream that trickled by;
But all at once she saw a sight that made her hold her breath,
And shake and tremble as if she were frightened near to death.
Oh, like some horrid monster of which the child had dreamed,
With nodding head and waving arms, the angry creature seemed;
It threatened her, it mocked at her, with gestures and grimace
That made her shrink with terror from its serpent-like embrace.
They kissed the trembling little one, they held her in their arms,
And tried in every way they could to quiet her alarms,
And said, “Oh, what a foolish little goose you are to be
So nervous and so terrified at nothing but a tree!”
They made her go up close to it, and put her arms around
The trunk and see how firmly it was fastened in the ground;
They told her all about the roots that clung down deeper yet,
And spoke of other curious things she never would forget.
Oh, I have heard of many, very many girls and boys
Who have to do without the sight of pretty books and toys,
Who have never seen the ocean; but the saddest thought to me
Is that anywhere there lives a child who never saw a tree.