MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 



FLOWERS. 



[Graduation essay of Miss Mamie Trotter, of Breckenridge, Mo., 

 read at the commencement of Kidder Institute, June 15, 1887. J 



The earth has been rightly called the flower garden of God, and I 

 think it would be difficult to tind a more appropriate name. 



We are enabled to realize this to its utmost extent, more in the 

 spring and sunimer than at any other time, when we may see our green 

 earth almost entirely covered with a countless variety of little beauties 

 which are of almost all sizes, colors and descriptions. We may for a 

 time think it strange that they can arrive at the state of perfection 

 they have, without being carefully watched and tended day by day by 

 the hand of man. Yet if we will stop and think, they are cultivated 

 and watched over by a Being who is the creator of the universe, and 

 in whose hand man is merely an instrument used for the performance 

 of such earthly tasks as tilling the soil, and arranging things while He 

 giveth the increase. Then has not our earth been rightly named His 

 flower garden ? 



We find flowers vastly different from ours in the different zones, 

 in some growing more luxuriantly than in others, as in those having a 

 certain average annual temperature certain vegetable growth will flour- 

 ish and each zone has its characteristic form of vegetation. They are 

 arranged witli such care, too, as some of the very sweetest are found 

 where they will be seen only by very rough, uncultured people, and 

 thus in their purity we may imagine they are urging the creatures 

 around them to reform, and are thus doing the world some good. 



