6. Yes, yes; let a man, when his enemy weeps, Be quick to receive him, a friend; For thus on his head in kindness he heaps Hot coals, to refine and amend; And hearts that are Christian more eagerly yearn, Over lips that, once bitter, to penitence turn, And whisper, (p.) FORGIVE AND FORGET. QUESTIONS.-1. Why the rising inflection on forget, 3d stanza! 2. What rule for the falling inflection on hearken, 4th stanza? 3. How, according to the notation, may the words forgive and forget be made emphatic, last line? See Remark, page 23. EXERCISE XXIII. BITTER WORDS. 1. Would'st thou a wanderer recláim, 2. If widely he hath gone astray, And dark excess has marked his way; 3. The lowering frown he will not bear, The stinging tooth of sharp rebuke; 4. Go kindly to him-make him feel EXERCISE XXIV. FLOWERS. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 1. Blessed be the man that really loves flowers-loves them for their own sake, for their beauty, their associations, the joy they have given, and always will give; so that he would sit down among them as friends and companions, if there was not another creature on earth to admire or praise them! But such men need no blessing of mine. They are blessed of God! Did He not make the world for such men? Are they not clearly the owners of the world, and the richest of all men? It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. But those who have a passion for nature, in the natural way, need no pictures nor galleries. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist. 2. He who only does not appreciate floral beauty, is to be pitied like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness. But men who contemptuously reject flowers, as effeminate and unworthy of manhood, reveal a certain coarseness. Were flowers fit to eat or drink, were they stimulative of passions, or could they be gambled with like stocks and public consciences, they would take them up just where finer minds would drop them, who love them as revelations of God's sense of beauty, as addressed to the taste, and to something finer and deeper than taste, to that power within us, which spiritualizes matter, and communes with God through His work, and not for their paltry market value. 3. Many persons lose all enjoyment of many flowers by indulging false associations. There be some who think that no weed can be of interest as a flower. But all flowers are weeds when they grow wildly and abundantly; and somewhere our rarest flowers are somebody's commonest. Flowers growing in noisome places, in desolate corners, upon rubbish, or rank desolation, become disagreeable by association. Roadside flowers, ineradicable, and hardy beyond all discouragement, lose themselves from our sense of delicacy and protection. And, generally, there is a disposition to undervalue common flowers. There are few that will trouble themselves to examine, minutely, a blossom that they have seen and neglected from their childhood; and yet, if they would but question such flowers, and commune with them, they would often be surprised to find extreme beauty where it had long been overlooked. 4. How one exhales, and feels his childhood coming back to him, when, emerging from the hard and hateful city streets, he sees orchards and gardens in sheeted bloom,-plum, cherry, pear, peach, and apple, waves and billows of blossoms rolling over the hill-sides, and down through the levels! My heart runs riot. This is a kingdom of glory. The bees know it. Are the blossoms singing? or is all this humming sound the music of bees? The frivolous flies, that never seem to be thinking of any thing, are rather sober and solemn here. Such a sight is equal to a sunset, which is but a blossoming of the clouds. 5. We love to fancy that a flower is the point of transition, at which a material thing touches the immaterial; it is the sentient vegetable soul. We ascribe dispositions to it; we treat it as we would an innocent child. A stem or root has no suggestion of life. A leaf advances toward it; and some leaves are as fine as flowers, and have, moreover, a grace of motion seldom had by flowers. Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest, and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. 6. We find ourselves speaking of them as laughing, as gay and coquettish, as nodding and dancing. No man of sensibility ever spoke of a flower as he would of a fungus, a pebble, or a sponge. Indeed, they are more life-like than many animals. We commune with flowers-we go to them, if we are sad or glad; but a toad, a worm, an insect, we repel, as if real life was not half so real as imaginary life. What a pity flowers can utter no sound! A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle! O, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be! 7. When we hear melodious sounds-the wind among trees, the noise of a brook falling down into a deep leaf-covered cavity-birds' notes, especially at night; children's voices as you ride into a village at dusk, far from your long-absent home, and quite home-sick; or a flute heard from out of a forest, a silver sound rising up among silver-lit leaves, into the moonlighted air; or the low conversations of persons whom you love, that sit at the fire in the room where you are convalescing; when we think of these things, we are apt to imagine that nothing is perfect, that has not the gift of sound. But we change our mind when we dwell lovingly among flowers; for they are always silent. Sound is never associated with them. 'They speak to you, but it is as the eye speaks, by vibrations of light and not of air. 8. It is with flowers as with friends. Many may be loved, but few much loved. Wild honeysuckles in the wood, laurel bushes in the very regality of bloom, are very beautiful to you. But they are color and form only. They seem strangers to you. You have no memories reposed in them. They bring back nothing from Time. They point to nothing in the future. But a wild briar starts a genial feeling. It is the country cousin of the rose; and that has always been your pet. You have nursed it, and defended it; you have had it for companionship as you wrote; it has stood by your pillow while sick; it has brought remembrance to you, and conveyed your kindest feelings to others. You remember it as a mother's favorite; it speaks to you of your own childhood-that white rosebush that snowed, in the corner, by the door; that generous bush that blushed red in the garden with a thousand flowers, who se gorgeousness was among the first things that drew your chillish eye, and which always comes up before you when you speak of childhood. 9. But no flower can be so strange, or so new, that a friendliness does not spring up at once between you. You gather them up along your rambles; and sit down to make their acquaintance on some shaded bank with your feet over the brook, where your shoes feed their vanity as in a mirror. You assort them; you question their graces; you enjoy their odor; you range them on the grass in a row, and look from one to another; you gather them up, and study a fit gradation of colors, and search for new specimens to fill the degrees between too violent extremes. All the while, and it is a long while, if the day be gracious and leisure ample, various suggestions and analogies of life are darting in and out of your mind. 10. This flower is like some friend; another reminds you of mignonnette, and mignonnette always makes you think of such a garden and mansion where it enacted some memorable part; and that flower conveys some strange and unexpected resemblance to certain events of society; this one is a bold soldier; that one is a sweet lady dear;-the white flowering bloodroot, trooping up by the side of a decaying log, recalls to your fancy |