Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/304

Rh "There is a hornets' nest,—a young hornets* nest. I used to be afraid of hornets ; now I will let you alone, Mr Stingabee! Look there! city joiners and masons don't build so well in Boston as this country carpenter, who is hod-carrier, architect, and mason, and puts up his summer-house of papier mache under the great limb of the elm. There is a piece of conscientious work! done by the job too,—so he works Sundays,—but done faithfully. What an overseer the good God is! But no, Mr Hornet, your little striped head didn't plan that house; not an artist, only a tool in another Hand!"

In the mill-pond close at hand he sees the water-lilies are all out. How handsomely they lie there, withdrawing the green coverlets lined with white, and turned up with pink, wherein they wrapped themselves up yesterday at noon! What a power of white and saffron colour within their cups! How they breathe their breath into his face, as if he and they were little children ! and are they not of the same Father, who cradles the lily and the man with equal love? The arrowhead and the pickerel weed blossom there, and tall flags grow out of the soft ground, with cardinals redder than Roman Lambruschini. The button-ball is in its glory, swarmed about with little insects, promoting the marriage of the flowers. The swamp honeysuckle has put on its white raiment also, as if to welcome the world, and stands there a candidate for all honours. How handsome is this vegetable tribe who live about the pond! Nay, under his feet is the little pale-blue forget-me-not. Once he used of a Sunday to fold it up in a letter-signed I know you never will, and send it to the dear little maiden, now mother of his tall boys and comely girls. She liked the letter all the more because it contained the handwriting of her lover and her God,—a two in one without mystery. She has the letter now, laid away somewhere, and her granddaughter years hence will come upon it and understand nothing. Like Eliot's Indian Bible, nobody can read it now. No; there must be a resurrection of the spirit to read what the Spirit wrote, —in Bible leaves, in flower leaves. There is the cymbidium he used to send on the same errand, saying, "God meant it for my Arethusa."

Hard by is the kitchen garden; the pumpkin vine, dis-