SIX WIDE-AWAKES,

You would have a heartache if you knew how many little
folks in great cities have no flowers.

Paradise Park in New York is a shabby bit of dry grass,
with a few miserable trees, and some wooden benches.

It is never like the Paradise we dream about, except on
Saturday afternoons in summer time. Then, down the
narrow street, drives a big wagon, filled with country flowers.

These are given into dirty little hands that get soap and
water as rarely as they get flowers, there. Old people come,
carrying babies, all forlorn; every one gets a flower.

O, how the children push and crowd to get near, for fear
there will not be enough for all. Hundreds of boys and
girls, shouting : ‘‘O, please give mea rose!” “O, lady, my
mother is sick ; do send her a growing flower!” “Say, mister !
This’ere little chap didn’t get any!”

O, dear! You cannot hear your own voice in the hub-
bub.

At last the flowers are all given away; the basket must
be turned up side down, and the wagon driven out of sight
before the children start.

There they go! They carry the bright, sweet-smelling
flowers up into garrets, down into cellars, where there is not
‘one other single pretty thing.

Yellow haired German babies; dark skinned Italian
‘babies; milk white Irish babies.

Listen to papa! He says they are all Amerzcan babies ;
we must never forget that; although their fathers and
mothers came over the sea.

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