Volume 7 — Wild Flowers.

The child, Mercedes, youngest of the three Whom God has sent me for a mother's crown. Brought me wild flowers, and with childish glee Thus prattled on, as at my feet she cast them down: "See, mamma! here are saucy flowers I found Hiding behind the hedge, like boys at play. Just peeping up their heads above the ground. To watch if any one should chance to pass that way. "'Aha!' said I, 'whose little flowers be you, And from whose garden have you run away? Your leaves are dripping with the morning dew. Fie, naughty things! What, think you, will the gardener say? "'Come, let me take you to my mamma's home; And she will put you in a golden vase, Where you shall stand and look around the room, And see your pretty, rosy faces in the glass.' "I took them softly up, and here they are. And now, my mamma, I should like to know Whose garden they have wandered from so far. And why they did not stay at their own home to grow?" I said: "My child, these flowers have never strayed From any other home. Their place to grow Is just behind the hedge, down in the glade. Though no one may their beauty see or sweetness know." Then she: "Why, mamma dear, how can that be? What use for them to grow there all alone? Why look so pretty if there's none to see? Or why need they smell any sweeter than a stone?" "No one on earth may see," I then replied— "No one may know that flowers are blooming there But God." Mercedes clapped her hands, and cried, "God's flowers! Oh! keep them, mamma, in your book of prayer." Methinks the child did choose a fitting place To put those unnursed blossoms of the field: Like them, our humble prayers with beauty grace The heart's rough soil, and unto God their perfume yield.