STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 105 



tracted his attention; nursing and watching them in his leisure 

 moments, he came at last to love their velvet eyes better than 

 human things. And soon with Pansy growing came the taste 

 for Botany, and with the knowledge of Botany came fame, and 

 honor, and higher than all, a reverence for the Great Botanist 

 who sent the voiceless Pansy on its holy mission of love. 



Years ago, in a city not a hundred miles removed from Ham- 

 ilton, a lady was standing at the open window of her princely 

 home, when her attention was attracted by a little child, whose 

 bare feet and scanty garments betokened her poverty. The 

 child was gazing with intense admiration upon the paradise of 

 flowers spread before her. A rose tree, with one choice, creamy 

 bloom, seemed to charm her most, and with an assurance, 

 strangely in keeping with her humble appearance, she stepped 

 inside the enclosure, advanced to the window, and said, "Please, 

 lady, may I pick that big white rose?" "Why, the idea of such 

 impudence ! Indeed you cannot pick the choicest flower in my 

 garden," replied the lady. And, without making any concilia- 

 tion for her brusqueness, she saw the child move away with 

 crestfallen look, and eyes brimming with tears. She was 

 scarcely out of sight, however, before the woman's "good 

 angel" began to chide her. Pleading eyes and "phantom foot- 

 steps" haunted her all day. "You might have tilled the little 

 faded apron with flowers, and the hungry child's heart with 

 rapture, whispered reproving Conscience." 



That night, in troubled sleep, the proud woman dreamed of 

 her lost Daisy, a precious human flower, who, years before, had 

 been transplanted in the land of fadeless bloom. Strangely, the 

 vision pictured her darling, standing, with bare feet and worn 

 garments, outside "The Beautiful Gate," not asking for admis- 

 sion, but only for one of the myriad roses that deck the heavenly 

 bowers. To her humble request, the angel guarding the gate 

 made answer, " Child, go back to Earth, and ask your mamma 

 for the White Rose she refused the little orphan yesterday." 

 Startled by this dream so real, the mother awoke, only to be 

 followed another day by the same picture of sorrow. Anxiously 

 she watched for a glimpse of the child, that she might make 

 some amends for her rudeness. At last an opportunity offered; 

 she saw her passing and with a cry of delight exclaimed, "Come 

 here darling, you shall have the big White Rose, and a whole 

 basket of lovely flowers beside." The thin lips quivered, tears 

 streamed from her eyes as she answered, " I don't want any 

 flowers now, mother's dead, she could'nt see them; I wanted the 

 rose for her. Yesterday they covered her up under the ground, 

 and now they are going to bind me out. Will it hurt me to be 

 bounded out?" 



Need we say, they didn't bind her out, Heaven had given that 

 Creamy Rose, a sweet mission of charity, through its voiceless 



