flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at Heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

* * * * *

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

--GEORGE HERBERT

MARY'S MEADOW.

CHAPTER I.

Mother is always trying to make us love our neighbors as ourselves.

She does so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or
not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest,
or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number
One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot
bear her to despise us!

We despise being selfish, too; but very often we forget. Besides, it
is sometimes rather difficult to love your neighbor as yourself when
you want a thing very much; and Arthur says he believes it is
particularly difficult if it is your next-door-neighbor, and that that
is why Father and the Old Squire quarrelled about the footpath through
Mary's Meadow.

The Old Squire is not really his name, but that is what people call
him. He is very rich. His place comes next to ours, and it is much
bigger, and he has quantities of fields, and Father has only got a
few; but there are two fields beyond Mary's Meadow which belong to
Father, though the Old Squire wanted to buy them. Father would not
sell them, and he says he has a right of way through Mary's Meadow to
go to his fields, but the Old Squire says he has nothing of the kind,
and that is what they quarrelled about.

Arthur says if you quarrel, and are too grown-up to punch each other's
heads, you go to law; and if going to law doesn't make it up, you
appeal. They went to law, I know, for Mother cried about it; and I
suppose it did not make it up, for the Old Squire appealed.

After that he used to ride about all day on his grey horse, with
Saxon, his yellow bull-dog, following him, to see that we did not
trespass on Mary's Meadow. I think he thought that if we children were
there, Saxon would frighten us, for I do not suppose he knew that we
knew him. But Saxon used often to come with the Old