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Almond, 
Ampgdalus pumila. Natura Orver: Rosacee—Rose Family. 
Spee * HE Almond is a beautiful little shrub, sending forth its deli- 
He if cate pink, crape-like blossoms early in the spring, completely 
~* covering each branch from base to apex, while the foliage 
is almost unseen. The ancients had a beautiful custom of 
wreathing poetic fables with everything, and there is scarcely 
a flower but what is clothed with some affecting tale of dis- 
appointed lovers. The Almond tree was said by them to have sprung 
from the dead body of Phyllis, princess of Thrace, who was watching 
for her betrothed husband’s return. On the day appointed for his 
arrival, she watched and waited anxiously, and at last, hopeless and 
despairing, killed herself upon the shore, and was changed into this 
shrub. 
eapatr, 
UT dreadful is their doom whom doubt has driven 
To censure fate, and pious hope forego: 
Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, 
Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, 
But frown on all that pass, a monument of woe. 
— Beattie, 
ETHINKS we stand on ruin; nature shakes HERE is no light shed on my way, 
About us; and the universal frame ’s Ev’n hope’s pale beam has fled, 
So loose, that it but wants another push And those I loved have gone for aye 
To leap from its hinges. ° —Lee, To the cold realms of the dead. 
—Marcia Hall. 
OW like gall and wormwood to the taste 
The cup that we have longed to drain may prove. 
—Lydia Fane Pierson. 
O* my darling, earth is weary, HO sees laid low, 
Life, without thee, sad and dreary, At a single blow, 
Ocean’s song a Miserere! The sweetest thing in his life, may know 
And my sun is burning low, What bitter ruth 
Fainter yet life’s embers glow, For my heart, in sooth, 
Tides will ebb that cannot flow. Was born of this naked, terrible truth. d 
i —Fames Franklin Fitts. —Mary E. Bradley. ii 
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