“The rose had been, one day, dropped by a lady, who was walking before Johnny, in Broadway. Johnny was an honest boy. He ran up to the lady, and offered her the rose which she had dropped. The lady smiled, and said, ‘You can keep it, my little boy. I do not want it.’
“The rose was then fresh and beautiful. Johnny thought that if he planted it, it might perhaps live. It did take root even in that poor soil, but it could not grow any.
“He looked up into my face, on the day that I first went to see his mother, and said,
“‘O, ma’am! do you think that my rose will live? I have kept it in the warmest place, and watered it every day.’
“‘Yes,’ said his mother, ‘however hungry and cold poor Johnny has been, he never forgot his rose.’
“I saw when he asked me the question that his rose was nearly dead. The tears came into his eyes when I told him this.
“Poor little boy! The flower was like himself, withering away for want of light and air.
“Just think, Alfred, how happy little Johnny would have been, running with his bare feet through the fields, looking at the golden and speckled butterflies, filling his cap with wild-flowers, and listening to the song of the birds, and the busy hum of the honey-bee!
“One day I took Johnny to my house, and showed him a stand of flowers. He was delighted. He clapped his hands, and his eyes sparkled. He smelt the heliotropes and the roses, and he looked at the rich flowers of the cactus. When I gave him a bouquet to carry to his own miserable home, he seemed perfectly happy.
“The next time I went to that dark, gloomy cellar, there the flowers stood in the old tin cup from which the poor rose had been taken.”