Thistle. 
271 
makes a man as merry as a cricket. Superfluous melancholy 
causeth care, fear, sadness, despair, envy, and many more evils 
besides; but religion teaches us to wait upon God’s providence, 
and cast our care upon Him that careth for us. What a fine 
thing were it if men and women could live so! and yet seven 
years’ care and fear makes a man never the wiser nor a farthing 
the richer. Discorides saith, ‘ the root borne about one doth the 
like, and removes all diseases of melancholy.’ Modern writers 
laugh at him; ‘let them laugh that win;’ my opinion is, that 
it is the best remedy against all diseases that grow; they that 
please may use it.” 
There! after all, one may get a grain or two of corn out of 
the old astrologer’s chaff, despite his leaving us in doubt as 
to whether laughter, or thistle-root, supplies his panacea. The 
Spear Thistle has been termed the emblem of beneficence, be¬ 
cause, says a botanical writer, “if a heap of clay be thrown 
up, nothing would grow upon it for many years, were it not 
that the seeds of this friendly plant, wafted thither by the 
wind, speedily vegetate, and, throwing wide their deep green 
leaves, which are cotton underneath and hairy above, form a 
cover for lesser plants. Beautiful flowers soon mantle the 
otherwise unsightly heap of clay; the small blue forget-me- 
not, the mouse-ear hawkweed, one of the loveliest of ‘ Flora’s 
watches,’ with her numerous relatives of wood and wall; the 
eye-bright and wild bugle grow there profusely, as also many 
a meek-eyed sister, who peeps from beneath the leaves of the 
guardian thistle.” 
