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ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
A SERMON FROM A THORN-APPLE TREE. 
^‘T WANT to tell you about my thorn-apple tree. It cqme up by the gate, 
1 where it gets the drip from the watering-trough ; that’s what made it grow 
so strong and handsome. Every year it is just as full of blossoms as the apple 
trees, and you know what it bears — little red seedy berries, good for noth¬ 
ing at all, so I used to think. But the first spring after I v^as sick, when I was 
thinking how pretty it was — all blown ^.out, and the green leaves peeping 
through the white — it just came to me that the thorn-apple was doing what it 
was made for exactly, the same as the russet trees and the pippins; and I took 
notice, as I never did before, how the squirrels came to eat the seeds in the fall, 
and h ow the blue-jays and the winter-birds seemed always to find something 
there for a breakfast, and I came to love that thorn-apple and enjoy it more 
than any thing else. It always seemed to have some lesson for me. I call it my 
preacher, and whenever I look at it I think the Lord wants thorn-apples as well 
as pippins. He sets a good many of His children to feeding birds and squirrels, 
and doing little things that nobody takes any note of, and I’m thankful every 
day that He lets me grow the blossoms, and feed His birds. Perhaps that is all 
He may want of you, Ruby, but don’t you be troubled about that. ‘Abide in 
Him,’ as the branch abideth in the vine, and He’ll see to the fruit. It will be 
just the kind He wants you to bear.” 
From Emily Huntington Miller’s “ Thorn-Apple .” 
THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. 
I WANDERED lonely where the pine trees made 
Against the bitter East their barricade, 
And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 
The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell 
- Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. 
From under dead boughs, for wLose loss the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines ; 
Lifted their glad surprise, 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees > 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, 
And snow-drifts lingered under April skies. 
As, pausing, o’er the loneiy flower i cent, 
I thought of lives thus slowly, clogged and pent, 
Which yet find room 
Through care and cumber. Coldness and decay, f 
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day, 
And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. 
Whittier. 
