The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo

FLOWERS.

Flowers come and go and we scarcely heed their presence. After the season for their appearing comes we drift into a settled indifference, and expect as a matter of right that they will always remain. We forget that they are little blessings, and we do not realize what cheer they bring to many poor souls. Passing along, in a garden here and there we notice the little green buds, some just beginning to develope into bright roses, but they engage the attention of only those who watch them day by day; who lie awake nights wondering if the little flowers are growing, and if they will expand into large red flowers, throwing out a delicate perfume, that will permeate the whole atmosphere; those who make it the first duty to see that the little plant has lived through the dark night and watch with an anxious care that nothing harmful shall come to blight or destroy. Then the little plant, that came into life so quick and mysteriously, grows just as mysteriously and noiselessly, and before we know it the air is laden with a rich fragrance and upon all sides are the censers of nature swung by the breeze that is only too eager to carry the burden that they throw out upon it.

We stop for a moment and revel in the efflorescence and then we pass on. Then the flowers fold up and droop and die away, having fulfilled their mission.

The blue bells and the buttercups, the little wild flowers that grow away out on the lonely plain spring up and play with the winds and add their sweet scents and die all unnoticed by the human eye. Sometimes we find them in graveyards--find the green, grassy mounds surrounded with lovely flowers, full of life and many hues, in mournful contrast with those who sleep the sleep that knows no wakening; the climbing rose that clusters that probably were watered more than once with hot tears that fell fast and thick; the bouquets prepared by tender hands cast carelessly down to decay and keep company with the sleeper below, or hung upon the tomb stone as guardians of a sacred trust, to plead with the despoiler who would seek to disturb the slumberer. Sometimes in neglected spots where the grass has been untouched for years, little wild flowers will come up, and bend their heads and try to look down through the sod to see what friendless mortal was placed there, and if their eyes could penetrate the earth they would find many such.