208 FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 
offensive traits. Probably it felicitates it- 
self upon its shrewdness, and pities the poor 
estate of its defenseless neighbors. How 
they must envy its happier fortune! It sees 
them browsed upon by the cattle, and can 
hardly be blamed if it chuckles a little to 
itself as the greedy creatures pass it by un- 
touched. School-girls and botanists break 
down the golden-rods and asters, and pull 
up the gerardias and ladies’-tresses; but 
neither school-girl nor collector often trou- 
bles the thistle. It opens its gorgeous 
blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmo- 
lested. Truly it is a great thing to wear an 
armor of prickles! 
“The human nature of plants,’ — have 
I any reader so innocent as not to feel at 
this moment the appropriateness of the 
phrase? Can there be one so favored as 
not to have some unmistakable thistles 
among his Christian townsmen and acquain- 
tance? Nay, we all know them. They are 
the more easily discovered for standing al- 
ways a little by themselves. They escape 
many slight inconveniences under which 
more amiable people suffer. Whoever finds 
himself in a hard place goes not to them for 
