ON THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GOD 



turns downs her celestial lights and makes 

 a gray day, that man may look downward, 

 where the little earth-lights shine. And of 

 these, where may one find more in their wild 

 native grace than in a pasture, which matches 

 its democratic hospitality to man and beast 

 in its catholic tolerance of all manner of 

 lowly blossoms, plebeian weeds, and down- 

 trodden shrubs, which are exiled from the 

 rest of the farm because they "spoil the 

 grass." 



The outcast thistle, the slighted steeple- 

 bush, milkweed, mouse-ear, bracken, and 

 mullein-stalk find the pasture a veritable 

 Home for the Friendless of plantdom, and 

 in its large and charitable air they flourish 

 and weave for themselves such gracious gar- 

 ments of beauty that they seem no longer 

 despised weeds, but as worthy of our wonder 

 and admiration as the most pampered flower 

 in our gardens. Where else so abundantly 

 as in an equal-suffrage pasture does a thistle 

 show us the richest hues of its royal purple, 

 and the silver-white down of its winged 

 seeds? And where so advantageously as on 



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