WHIRLIGIGS. 99 



periments are dangerous things. So thought the 

 German government, and it sent out an order 

 that no one should use any more of the poison- 

 ous sweet-pea bread. Such are the associations 

 connected with the lupines. 



Still, there are those less depraved among these 

 flowers, and the blackberries by the cliff may re- 

 mind us that their relatives, the strawberries, have 

 comforted many a bereaved German mother in 

 olden times. For when the people of Germany 

 were heathen and worshipped the goddess Frigga, 

 there was a belief among her devotees that on 

 one day of each year Frigga, the invisible, went 

 strawberry ing, and when, afterward, she left the 

 earth with her rosy load, she divided her berries 

 among all the little children that had ever died. 

 And, so firmly was this believed in Germany, that 

 on Frigga's strawberrying day, no mother whose 

 little child was dead would ever eat any strawber- 

 ries, for, if she did, her little child would not re- 

 ceive any when Frigga divided her berries among 

 the children in Paradise. 



It is a heathen superstition, and yet who can 

 tell how many mothers' hearts may have been com- 

 forted at the thought that by denying themselves 

 they could add a little to the happiness of those 

 they so sorely missed ? And perhaps there are 

 some of us nowadays who might be benefited by 

 the truth at the heart of the old superstition. For 

 there is a truth here, and it is this. There are 



