PPLE; OR, EBENEZER THE DISOWNED.

It is proverbial to say, with reference to particular constitutions or
habits of body, that May is a _trying_ month, and we have known what it
is to experience its trials in the sense signified. With our
grandmothers too, yea, and with our grandfathers also, May was held to
be an unlucky month. Nevertheless, it is a lovely, it is a beautiful
month, and the forerunner of the most healthy of the twelve. It is like
a timid maiden blushing into womanhood, wooing and yet shrinking from
the admiration which her beauty compels. The buds, the blossoms, the
young leaves, the tender flowers, the glittering dew-drops, and the song
of birds, burst from the grasp of winter as if the God of nature
whispered in the sunbeams--"Let there be life!" But it is in the morning
only, and before the business of the world summons us to its mechanical
and artificial realities, that the beauties of May can be felt in all
their freshness. We read of the glories of Eden, and that the earth was
cursed because of man's transgression; yet, when we look abroad upon the
glowing landscape, above us, and around us, and behold the pure heavens
like a sea of music floating over us, and hear the earth answer it back
in varied melody, while mountain, wood, and dale, seem dreaming in the
sound, and stealing into loveliness, we almost wonder that a bad man
should exist in the midst of a world that is still so beautiful, and
where every object around him is a representative of the wisdom, the
goodness, the mercy, the purity, and the omnipotence of his Creator.
There is a language in the very wild-flowers among our feet that
breathes a lesson of virtue. We can appreciate the feeling with which
the poet beheld

"The _last_ rose of summer left blooming alone;"

but in the firstlings of the spring, the primrose, the lily, and their
early train, there is an appeal that passes beyond our senses. They are
like the lispings and the smiles of infancy--lowly preachers, emblems of
our own immortality, and we love them like living things. They speak to
us of childhood and the scenes of youth, and _memory_ dwells in their
very fragrance. Yes, May is a beautiful month--it is a month of fair
sights and of sweet sounds. To it belongs the lowly primrose blushing by
the brae-side in congregated beauty, with here and there a cowslip
bending over them like a lover among the flowers; the lily hanging its
head by the brook that reflects its ima