! And how unhappy they must feel, if indeed that kind can
feel like myself and my equals. Certainly there is a difference, and
distinctions must be made, or we should all be equal."

And the apple branch looked down with a species of pity, especially
upon a certain kind of flower of which great numbers are found in the
fields and in ditches. No one bound them into a nosegay, they were too
common; for they might be found even among the paving-stones, shooting
up everywhere like the rankest weeds, and they had the ugly name of
"dandelion," or "dog-flower."

"Poor despised plants!" said the apple branch. "It is not your fault
that you received the ugly name you bear. But it is with plants as
with men--there must be a difference!"

"A difference?" said the sunbeam; and he kissed the blooming apple
branch, and saluted in like manner the yellow dandelions out in the
field--all the brothers of the sunbeam kissed them, the poor flowers
as well as the rich.

Now the apple branch had never thought of the boundless beneficence of
Providence in creation towards everything that lives and moves and has
its being; he had never thought how much that is beautiful and good
may be hidden, but not forgotten; but that, too, was quite like human
nature.

The sunbeam, the ray of light, knew better; and said, "You don't see
far, and you don't see clearly. What is the despised plant that you
especially pity?"

"The dandelion," replied the apple branch. "It is never received into
a nosegay; it is trodden under foot. There are too many of them; and
when they run to seed, they fly away like little pieces of wool over
the roads, and hang and cling to people's dress. They are nothing but
weeds--but it is right there should be weeds too. Oh, I'm really very
thankful that I was not created one of those flowers."

[Illustration: THE CHILDREN AND THE DANDELIONS.]

But there came across the fields a whole troop of children; the
youngest of whom was so small that it was carried by the rest, and
when it was set down in the grass among the yellow flowers it laughed
aloud with glee, kicked out with its little legs, rolled about and
plucked the yellow flowers, and kissed them in its pretty innocence.
The elder children broke off the flowers with their tall stalks, and
bent the stalks round into one another, link by link, so that a whole
chain was made; first a necklace, and then a scarf to hang over their
shoulders and tie round their waists, and th