MEDITATIONS ON A BROOMSTICK. 
“ I am sent with broome before 
To sweep the dust behind the doore.” 
—Midsummer Night's Dream , 
Sunshine prosper thee, sweet lady-birch! Softest of 
dews and holiest of showers fall upon thy tasselled sprays 
and trembling foliage, and ruddiest of morning glances 
break upon thy silver bark ! And thou, bonny broom, 
hiding thyself in the moorland hollows, how many belted 
bees have visited thy ringlets since the spring began ? 
how many wanderers hath thy perfume solaced ? over 
how many aching heads hast thou shook* thy rushy 
branches, hushing the lone wayfarer into Elysian dreams 
as he lay on the pliant moss beneath thee ? It is in the 
greenest of glens and the mossiest of woody nooks that 
broomstalfs flourish,—on the healthiest of wild moorlands 
that the bonny broom comes to birth. Blue and golden 
flowers watch over them in infancy, and bearded oaks 
bend above their lusty youth. A broomstick! Are 
“ proper people 99 shocked at the suggestion—to them—• 
of the vileness and scullery refuse which the broom is 
used to sweep away? No matter—what is mere fuel to 
them shall be philosophy to us; and with the reverent 
