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Page 5 text:
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THE NORMAL ADVANCE W 3 And at last in her heart grew up a bitterness and resentment, which became too great for her to conceal. All the leaves which sprang in soft hopefulness from her body, soon ended in defiant spines thriist out in irritation at all the world. Being better than the grass, why had she not been born a companion of the leaves and blossoms which reveled in the tree- tops? Her very growth was but a mockery be- side the tall, straight trunks that rose so lightly into heaven. And ever more impenetrably did the thistle wrap herself in her garment of thorns, resolved at last to shut out the world, as she herself seemed shut out by all created things. But mother earth did not forget this most neglected of her creatures. Without partiality, from day to day and from month to month, she sent up the life-giying nourishment to thistle and grass and lordly trees alike. And all the while the brook kept up its shallow chatter, forever appearing to take an interest, and yet forever bound on its own thoughtless course. sAnd the revels, too, in the tree-tOps continued as before. But what were they all to the lonely thistle? Theirs was the golden feast of sun- light, hers the garment, of thorns in the shadow below. Better had it been for her7 if she had never known of that gleaming life, for the share which fell to her was only a hasty Hash of brightness now and then, which escaped through their ranks as they swayed and shifted in their haughty processions, like a crumb dropped without thought from the tables of light. So, little by little and day by day, the poor thistle came to hate the light, and to wish for the darkness, which alone treats all the creatures of earth alike. She hated the living and growing of the day-time, and longed only for the nothingness into which the night wraps the reveling blossoms no less than the lonely weed. And all day long she stood with her countenance set westward toward the rift in the forest through which the brook passed on its way, and waited for the night to come. But the lord of light cared naught for this, and day by day he passed with his gleaming train far from the thistle,s narrow span of sky. And yet it was there, at even-time7 that the purple clouds, his hand-maidens, gathered to await his coming. And with their fine feminine feeling for the wants of the needy and for- saken, with the infinite tact which they had learned in their long service, they contrived to let even the lonely thistle see the reiiection of the glory which she was not herself to behold. Not long was the time during which the clouds could tarry at the rift in the forest, through which the brook passed on its way. But their gentle ministry in time brought new life and hope to the lonely thistle, even against her wish, and soon she dreamed all night of the purple clouds she had seen in the evening, and of purple flowers that grew where the spines of her garment were by day, and at last she forgot that she had hated and began to love. The nights passed away, and the days that followed them, and mid-summer came and went. The revelers in the tree-tops began to grow weary of their gorgeous existence. The birds of passage, too, musicians all the summer long, made bold to intrude upon the scene of the season7s gaiety, and in sharp and strident voices to discuss the time of departing. Even the breezes forgot at times their wooing gal- antry of the earlier days. But the thistle in the shady gloom below had grown taller and stronger. The thoughtless glints of light from above no longer irritated her as before. Night after night she dreamed of the purple liowers, until the glow of the sunset clouds became to her as a future life. And then, one day, she knew that her Vision had turned into reality. First upon her highest top, and then on all her branches, the flower-fruit of her dreams came forth in purple glory. More than ever now did she disdain the craven grass and the simple brook with its in- constant chatter. When the revels above were over and the tree-tops bare and neglected, why might not she, purple-crowned herself, be queen of the forest? For one brief moment even she ventured to 100k upward to the new realm which was to be hers. But that one look was
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Page 6 text:
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4 THE NORMAL ADVANCE the end of her pride. For her children, the blossoms, of whom she had dreamt, on whom her life and love were expended, unanimous in their ingratitude, seemed ashamed of their lowly mother. The purple of their faces, which she so longed to see, was turned away to the light from which it had come. Then she knew that she was still but a humble thistle, whose real lot was of the earth, and only her dreams of heaven. And that of which she had dream- ed, the purple flower, which her own hope and her longing had made a reality, belonged not to her, but to the light. Hers was only the spiny back by which the blossoms acknowledged her earthy parenthood. From mother earth she had come, and to her ways she now returned. Dark, sullen and in- scrutable, like her, she sent up the nourishing sap of life to the thankless blossoms, and they grew, and they attracted the wooing bees and the admiring butterflies, and flirted with the breezes' and the simple brook. A humbler life of joy than that in the'tree-tops, and yet, des- tined like it to end. For joy and sunlight is nowhere for length of time. Only the gloom and the darkness, and the dull, dense earth, have life everlasting. And into her inscrutable bosom, joyless as it had been at its birth, the thistle7s spirit little by little descended. The blossoms on her tops lost their gayness, their purple heads turned white. They were roughly handled now by the winds that had so lately been their suitors, and carried away they knew not whither. But even then, though they stopped not once to look around, to the dim eyes of the lonely thistle they were lovelier than all her dreams, as they fioated and danced from her sight in the train of their new lord. Thus day by day they left her, their faces ever turned away without adieu. And when they were all gone, the thistle alone stood pale and Silent amid the dying grass. KINDNESS. Who lives For kindness gives A light to darkened lands; And though no image of him stands In public place, he is a martyr Amid piratic schemes of barter And triumphs tho, he die unwept; His light may once have crept Through hearts of stone And shone. eMaac E hmamn.
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