LESSON 78.

WINTER BEAUTY.

NATURE is very exacting. You may make her a

flying visit in August, and she will, indeed, unfold to you the beauties of dew-drop, and thunder-shower, and evening sky, but to know her in her wholeness, to drink in full measure the "life that hides in the marsh and wold," to conceive all her magnificent possibilities, you must woo her from New Year to New Year, and every New Year shall bring you a fairer picture, a richer blessing, than the last.

2. You shall look out upon a gray, frozen earth and a gray, chilling sky. The trees stretch forth to you their naked branches as if imploringly. The air pinches and pierces you; a home-sick desolation clasps around your shivering, shrinking heart; and then God works a miracle. The windows of heaven are opened, and thence comes forth a blessing. The gray, wintry sky unlocks her treasures; and softness, and whiteness, and warmth, and beauty float gently down upon both the evil and the good.

3. Through all the long night, while you sleep, the work goes noiselessly on. Earth puts off her earthliness; and when the morning comes, she stands before you in the white robes of a saint. The sun hallows her with baptismal touch, and she is glorified. There is no longer on her pure brow anything common or unclean.

4. The Lord God hath wrapped her about with light as with a garment. His divine charity hath covered the multitude of her sins; and there is no scar or stain, no "mark of her shame," no "seal of her sorrow."

5. The far-off hills swell their white purity against the pure blue of the heavens. The sheeted splendor of the fields sparkles back a thousand suns for one. The trees lose their nakedness and misery and desolation, and

every slender twig is clothed upon with glory. All the roofs are blanketed with snow; all the fences are bordered. Every gate-post is statuesque; every woodpile is a marble quarry. Harshest outlines are softened. Instead of angles and ruggedness and squalor, there are billowy, fleecy undulations.

6. Nothing so rough, so common, so ugly, but it has been transfigured into newness of life. Everywhere the earth has received "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi ness." Without sound of hammer or ax, without the grating of saw or the click of chisel, prose has been sculptured into poetry. The actual has put on the silver vail of the ideal.

7. Will you look more closely? A part is, if possible, more beautiful than the whole. On the texture of your coat-sleeve one wandering snow-flake has alighted. Gaze at it before it vanishes from your sight. What a world of symmetry it discloses to you! What an airy, fairy, crystalline splendor! What delicate spires of feathery light shoot out from the center, with tiny fringes, and rosy, radiating bars!

8. In all your life you have never seen anything more beautiful, more perfect; and you may stand "breast-high" in just such marvelous radiance. Talk of robbers' caves and magic lamps! No Eastern imagination, rioting in "barbaric pearl and gold," can eclipse the magnificence in which you live and move and have your being.

9. And there is a deeper beauty than this. It is not only that the snow makes fair what was good before, but it is a messenger of love from heaven, bearing glad tidings of great joy. Hope for the future comes down to the earth in every tiny flake. Underneath the deep and widespreading snow-drifts, as they span the hill-side and lie lightly piled in the valleys, the earth-spirits and fairies are ceaselessly working out their multifold plans.

10. The grasses hold high carnival safe under their crystal roof. The roses and lilies keep holiday. The snow-drops and hyacinths and the pink-lipped May-flower wait as they that watch for the morning. The life that stirs beneath thrills to the life that stirs above. The spring sun will mount higher and higher in the heavens; the sweet snow will sink down into the arms of the violets; and, at the word of the Lord, the earth shall come up once more as a bride adorned for her husband.

11. "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Gail Hamilton.

I

LESSON 79.

THE BETTER SERVICE.

FREIGHTED a little boat

With the loveliest flowers that grow;
Pinks from the edge of my garden-walk,

Round and smooth as a lady's throat;

Roses, reddest that blow:

Drenched to the heart with sweet June wines,
There were purple pansies and columbines;

Pied petunias and shy sweet-peas,

Lost in a tangle of gadding stems;

Soft balsams, fretted with feet of bees,
And foxgloves, yellow, with crimson hems;

Over all, like a vail, I cast

White clematis, as soft as wool

It filled like a sail when the breeze was full; A bunch of kissed violets - they were the last!

2.

I launched my little boat

On the saddest river I know;

With careful hands I set it afloat,

And bade it speed to the place of graves,
That the indolent water laps and laves
Many a mile below.

I deemed it would strike on the shallow bar
Of the little nook where the willows are,
And fling its treasure on one low mound,
That is only with long, straight grasses crowned;
Where never a wilding blossom is found,
Never a daisy as Springs go round.
O long prone grass! with your fibres fine
Bleaching yellow in storm and shine,
You never can rival the shimmering flow
Of beautiful tresses that bleach below.

3.

But a storm was loosed in heaven:

The lightnings came out apace,

And the wide-mouthed winds gave chase;
In their jaws my boat was driven
Wide of its destined place.

They bore my boat to a desolate land;

They tossed my flowers on a barren strand,
Where huts of dwellers were far and few,
Where rank salt-fennel and bitterweed grew.
O bald, blank rock! did you temper the shock,
As you could, to my delicate crew?

Do not die, sweet roses, on that rude breast
For a cottage-window that looks to the west
Has lighted its signal for you;

And feet of children come pattering out,
Plashing the rainy pools about.

They look at the flowers, the rock, the skies

"'T was the thunder," they say, with satisfied eyes; "It shook so hard in heaven, up there,

The flowers came falling right down through the air!"

4.

Did I mourn for my boat that sailed
No more to the beckoning west?
For Love's fond mission that failed?

For the flowers I had thought so blest
To die where the long grass vailed
The place of my darling's rest?
No! At evening-time it was light:
I said to my heart: "Let us see
How God is wiser than we,
And guideth the storms aright,

On the rivers that roll to His sea."

For the cottager kissed his wife that night,
For the moist red rose in her hair,

And the smile that she used to wear
And the babes were given a lily to keep
Each in its bosom, awake or asleep,

And the praises their sweet lips said
Were better than flowers for my dead!

Helen L. Bostwick.