

December, 1907 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



231 



doing now, since the editor of this magazine 

 is the friend who wrote to me. Moreover, it 

 a true story, to the facts of which there are is 

 many actual witnesses, chief among them the 

 big settlement building at 48 and 50 Henry 

 Street, New York, which owes its existence 

 Avith all the work and many interests it 

 shelters to a single flower, a wild despised 

 thing at that, despised by all but the children 

 who love it. Here is the story: 



Once upon a time there was a winter when 

 our children had the scarlet fever. There 

 were three of them and they came down with 

 it, end on, as it were, in the way mothers 

 know. When one was quite done with it, 

 the next sickened and it had all to be gone 

 over again, all the anxiety, all the sleepless 

 nights, so that, whereas the first had been 

 stricken in Christmas week, it was almost 

 Easter before the last sat up, pale and worn 

 but safe, by the window and looked out upon 

 the storm-tossed world. None of us has ever 

 forgotten that winter and its long hard cold. 

 It seemed as, if the sun would but come out 

 bright and warm once more, the load of dread 

 that lay upon us all would be lifted. One 

 day, wandering moodily about the garden 

 where all the flowers were tucked safely 

 away and asleep under the snow, my toe 

 pushed up a frozen weed that had been 

 thrown out by the January thaw. It was 

 just a little knot of sprawling roots, but with 

 the instinct of pity for a thing that is making 

 a brave fight I picked it up, put it in a pot 

 and took it into the children's room to be 

 thawed out. It looked as if there might be 

 life in it yet, and there was. It began to 

 grow right away; a little green top peeped 

 out and almost daily grew in our sight, as 

 the children moved it about in the pale sun- 

 light that slanted through the window as 

 soon as we had housed the little wild thing, 

 as if it were looking in to see what we 

 had done with it. And when at last, on 

 Easter Sunday, a tiny little image of the 

 sun . itself opened up on our window-ledge 

 we knew the reason: they were kin. It was 

 a little dandelion I had rescued. The shout 

 the children set up when they saw it, and the 

 joyful commotion in that sick-room! It 

 beat all the doctor's medicines, and, as if it 

 knew, it grew more beautiful day by day. 

 There was no fragrance about it, but there 

 was sunlight and cheer and spring, and the 

 children loved it. They watered and tended 

 it and never thought it bother, and the little 

 flower repaid every kindness a hundred times. 

 At night when I was back from the office 

 and the doctor would let me, I sat in the sick- 

 room and told them stories of the poor chil- 

 dren I had seen that day, and of their hard 

 lives in the tenements, and the flower stood 

 in our little circle and listened with the rest. 



I am sure it did; for when summer came 

 at last with the daisies, the children brought 

 me big armfuls they had picked in the fields 

 and bade me take them to "the poors" I had 

 told them about. And I know their dande- 

 lion friend put it into their hearts as a 

 messenger from Him who loves little children 

 whether they live in palaces or tenements, and 

 who makes the flowers grow. For you shall 

 see what came of it. I carried the daisies 



across the ferry, but I never got much farther. 

 The children of the street, the little raga- 

 muffins, besieged me the moment they saw 

 them. They clung to my coat and my arms 

 crying for posies. Games, fights, everything 

 was forgotten in the hot desire for the 

 blossom that came from a world denied those 

 whose only playground is between two 

 gutters. I gave them all I had, and the next 

 day I brought more. That day I did not 

 get farther than just out of the block. The 

 day after that the children waited for me at 

 the ferry-house, and I had to get the police- 

 man detailed there to rescue me. That 

 afternoon, when I had a quiet hour in the 

 office, I sat down and wrote my experience 

 for my newspaper, asking the host of workers 

 who came to the city every morning through 

 the fields of Jersey or Long Island to gather 

 flowers by the way and give them to the 

 children; it would make everybody happy. 



I think all of them must have taken the 

 hint, only instead of bringing them them- 

 selves they sent them to me. My office 

 became a flower mission in no time, choked 

 with boxes that came from even' corner of 

 the compass, and I had to get as many as six 

 policemen, instead of one, to help me out. 

 They went to distribute them with me in the 

 Mulberry Street and the Mott Street tene- 

 ments, for it was in the days before the force 

 and all the rest of us had been reformed out 

 of the humanities with other things. If you 

 were to ask policemen for such a service 

 now, what a lecture on the waste of the 

 taxpayer's money you would get. I will say 

 this much for the old days, that never did I 

 see policemen work with heartier good will, 

 though it was their off time I took. 



Very soon some way had to be found to 

 systematize the work that had so suddenly 

 sprung up, out of nothing as it seemed. And 



"The settlement building which owes its existence to a single flower" 



