Gateway to the Classics: Display Item
C. C. Long
[Illustration]

A FLOWER is a weak and tiny thing; but there are many flowers, and by helping together they cover the earth with beauty and fill the air with sweetness. They seem to have been made to give us pleasure.

It will be easy and useful to learn something about the flowers that grow where you live. How many flowers can you mention by name? Which do you know at sight? Where would you go to find them?

Would you find them all growing in the same place? Which can live only in wet places? Which thrive best where there is but little moisture?

If we take a walk in the fields in the early spring, which flowers shall we be likely to see? Which later? What color are they? Which are fragrant? Which most beautiful? Which would you like for your flower vase? Which would you like to plant and care for in a box of earth or a garden-bed?

Can you find and name the parts of a plant—root, stem, leaves, bud, flower? Learn the uses of each part.

Here are some pretty verses on "Spring and the Flowers." Perhaps you will commit them to memory.

In the snowing and the blowing,

In the cruel sleet,

Little flowers begin their growing

Far beneath our feet.

Softly taps the Spring and cheerly:

"Darlings, are you there?"

Till they answer, "We are nearly,

Nearly ready, dear.

"Where is Winter with his snowing?

Tell us, Spring," they say.

Then she answers, "He is going,

Going on his way.

"Poor old Winter does not love you,

But his time is past;

Soon my birds shall sing above you—

Set you free at last."