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24 



Wat ifragrant 1Rote Book 



The glories of our dingle dell are not exhausted and yet we , 

 can scarcely look at the warm banks where the sunshine J 

 plays a dreamy dance with the shadowy leaves without half 

 expecting to see the breezy cyclamen nodding at us. <5:v 



" As some lone miser, visiting his store 



Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er, 

 Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, '-<^ 



Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still." 



Were our wild-wood in the Holy Land, cyclamen we 

 should have in countless thousands, and even nearer at home 

 wie might see "Those wayside shrines of sunny Italy where 

 gillifiower and cyclamen are renewed with every morning." 

 Let us however be modest. We must not expect too lavish 

 a profusion for any one favoured spot of ours for what does 

 Mahomet say: "Benign is God towards his servants. For 

 whom He will doth He provide; and He is the Strong, the 

 Mighty. . . . Should God bestow abundance upon his 

 servants they might act wantonly on the earth; but He 

 sendeth down what He will by measure; for He knoweth, 

 beholdeth his servants. " \ \ \ I 



Almost as if in answer to our bold wish for the cyclamen 

 of the Holy Land we see all about us however the little white 

 faces of the Star of Bethlehem to charm us with its innocent 

 purity and to remind us of the little town south of Jerusalem 

 where the babe lay in the manger nearly two thousand years 

 ago and many thousand miles away. It is amusing to hear a 



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