14 Lily and Water-Lily.

 

not come to remind her children of what she has told
them to do, as mothers do in other countries, but
expects them to remember it all for being told once,
and punishes none the less severely because the excuse
is that the rule was forgotten.

All the children of Mother Earth have their use
and their work to do in the world.

Some birds and beasts and insects are meant to be
the food of others of her children, and not one of
them but should help to make all that is good grow
on the earth if it does what it was intended to do.

Thus the bees, as they fly from flower to flower,
kissing those whom they love and sucking honey for
their own food, carry the honey also from one flower
to another, and so make.the flowers grow and become
many more on the land.

So the birds, as they pick the seeds of flowers to
carry to their own nests, fly with them across vast
_tracts of country, and plant them in distant lands
where, but for their innocent work, such flowers would
never have bloomed at all.