"Why did you say the road was rough and long to that beautiful garden?—is it so very, very hard to be good?—and does it take so very long?"
"You must not feel sad because it is not easy to be good; you must think of it bravely, and joyfully. Why, my Alice! did you not say you never felt tired when you were going to a pleasant place? It is not always easy to do right; sometimes we are sorely tempted, and then it seems very difficult; but what of that? It is possible, always, for God never requires of us what we cannot do. When you feel discouraged, remember that angels in heaven were little children once, and that some of them found it as hard as you do to be good and true, but they tried over and over again, and are blessed angels now. They love to acknowledge that it was not by their own strength they overcame evil, but that all the good and truth and happiness they have are from God. He does not love you less than He did them, for His love is infinite to all His children, and if you are willing He will lead you also into His Garden of Eden."
HAVE A FLOWER IN YOUR ROOM.
A FIRE in winter, a flower in summer! If you can have a fine print or picture all the year round, so much the better; you will thus always have a bit of sunshine in your room, whether the sky be clear or not. But, above all, a flower in summer!
Most people have yet to learn the true enjoyment of life; it is not fine dresses, or large houses, or elegant furniture, or rich wines, or gay parties, that make homes happy. Really, wealth cannot purchase pleasures of the higher sort; these depend not on money, or money's worth; it is the heart, and taste, and intellect, which determine the happiness of men; which give the seeing eye and the sentient nature, and without which, man is little better than a kind of walking clothes-horse.
A snug and a clean home, no matter how tiny it be, so that it be wholesome; windows, into which the sun can shine cheerily; a few good books (and who need be without a few good books in these days of universal cheapness?)—no duns at the door, and the cupboard well supplied, and with a flower in your room!—and there is none so poor as not to have about him the elements of pleasure.
Hark! there is a child passing our window calling "wallflowers!" We must have a bunch forthwith: it is only a penny! A shower has just fallen, the pearly drops are still hanging upon the petals, and they sparkle in the sun which has again come out in his beauty.
How deliciously the flower smells of country and nature! It is like summer coming into our room to greet us. The wallflowers are from Kent, and only last night were looking up to the stars from their native stems; they are full of buds yet, with their promise of fresh beauty. "Betty! bring a glass of clear water to put these flowers in!" and so we set to, arranging and displaying our pennyworth to the best advantage.
But what do you say to a nosegay of roses? Here you have a specimen of the most beautiful of the smiles of Nature! Who, that looks on one of these bright full-blown beauties, will say that she is sad, or sour, or puritanical! Nature tells us to be happy, to be glad, for she decks herself with roses, and the fields, the skies, the hedgerows, the thickets, the green lanes, the dells, the mountains, the morning and evening sky, are robed in loveliness. The "laughing flowers," exclaims the poet! but there is more than gayety in the blooming flower, though it takes a wise man to see its full significance—there is the beauty, the love, and the adaptation, of which it is full. Few of us, however, see any more deeply in this respect than did Peter Bell:—