Ella's Flower Garden.



LITTLE Ella had been visiting her friend Amelia one beautiful spring day, and had come home quite charmed with her flower garden.

She could not rest until her own little plat of ground had been laid out in a similar manner. 

  Here was a little cross sown with white flowers, and there a star of golden ones with a great crescent surrounding it, the borders of which 'were to be pansies of the richest royal purple. Much time and thought did she give to her garden, and not a weed was suffered in the clean gravel walks. She followed her friend's practice, and every fort-night got Bridget to pour over the paths a boiler full of hot water. This killed off every weed among the stones, and saved a great deal of weeding and watching.

Little Ella's cheeks grew rosy with the exercise, and she was so engaged with her flower garden that Sabbath seemed quite a break in the week. She usually sat with her book by a window that overlooked her flowers, and I fear her thoughts, were more on them than on her Sabbath reading.

"I am really glad to see my little girl so faithful to her garden," said mother one Sabbathafternoon. "Amelia gave you quite a start in the business, didn't she."

"Yes, mother. I am very glad I made her that visit," said Ella, a little surprised that mother should have brought up the subject on that day.

"Now there is another little garden I should love dearly to have you copy after. 

It is Nelly Aikin's."

"Why, mother, I think you can't mean it. Nelly hasn't walked a step for a year or more, and her little garden is full of weeds. I don't think there are a dozen flowers in it. She never goes into it, unless some one helps her out, and then she can only lie in the shade upon the green grass."

"Ah, Ella, the garden I mean has some of the sweetest flowers in I ever knew, and the fewest weeds. They are, too, just such flowers as the Lord loves best."

"I should like to raise those of all others," said Ella, looking out rather curiously into her flower beds.

"It is the heart garden I speak of. Little Nelly has cultivated the sweet flowers of love and patience, of meekness and quietness, in a wonderful degree. I wish my Ella would strive hard to do the same. It would be a sad thing if the little flower garden should be all beautiful and blooming, while the heart was full of weeds. Only Jesus can help us in this work, but he is ready and willing to do it, and there is no work he loves better than to help these little heart gardeners. 





Child's World.