Parables from Flowers

by Gertrude P. Dyer

'"Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin,"' read the mother one evening.

'But, mother, what are lilies like? I have never seen one, you know,' asked the boy, when she had ceased reading and had closed the book.

In simple language, she endeavoured to describe to her town-born child the exquisite beauties of the flowers of the field, and he, with an innate love of the beautiful, caught readily at all she said, and seemed as though he saw them all as she depicted.

'How I should love to be where there are always flowers!' he exclaimed; 'it must be like paradise! But those I have seen always close up at night. I wish there was one here that opened of an evening, as if to greet me when I come home!'

I know not how it happened, but the next night, when little Davie entered his home, a delicious perfume filled the air, and standing in the cottage window was an Evening Primrose, with its petals fully expanded.

'Mother, mother,' cried the boy, 'my wish has come true! here is a flower opening its blossoms to bid me welcome home;' and in excess of delight he knelt and kissed his treasure again and again. And words cannot express the love he bestowed upon the plant; it was to him an unfeigned joy to watch the growing of each leaf, the gradual unfolding of each fresh bud; and every night, on his return from work, his first thought, after the thought for his mother, was of his sweet Evening Primrose.

Those who gather flowers at will, prize them for a while, then cast them carelessly aside, can form no idea of the all-absorbing love the little miner lad evinced for his one fair flower; it was his sole treasure, and he ever watched and tended it lovingly and well.

But time passed on, and it was Davie's last day in the coal-mine. He was going to exchange that toilsome life, so uncongenial to his taste, but which stern necessity had made him adopt, for a new and brighter occupation, one, too, for which he had always ardently longed. The manager of whom he had spoken to his mother had frequently noticed the gentle, fair-haired boy; prosperity had not hardened his heart (as it so often does), and recollections of the long-ago flashed ever across him, when he saw Davie bravely striving to do his best to help his mother bear her burden of sorrowful poverty. He too had been a collier lad in those far-off days, and 'the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.' The grass was green above that dear mother's grave, whose latter years had been cheered and comforted by his tender, fostering love; but his thoughts were of her, as, laying his hand upon the lad's curly head, he kindly asked,—

'Would you like to leave the pit-work, David, and go into the engineers' department?'

'What! and become a great man like Stephenson and Brunel? Oh yes, sir!' the boy joyfully exclaimed, for, like all youthful ambitions he vaulted at once to the highest pinnacle of greatness—there is no midway for the ardent young.