Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/309

296 too beautiful for use. you build what is worth more than ships, for there is a heart in you!

"Look there, where the old barn stood! how the ivy and wild grape vine have come and covered np the rock, casting a handsome veil over what man left bare and ugly. So it is on all the roadsides betwixt here and town. One day the railroad embankments will be also green and lovely. First come weeds,—a sort of rough great coat, then grass, then flowers also. So is it with all our destructiveness. Nature walks backward, and from her own shoulders casts the garment of material beauty on the human shame of Waterloo and Balaklava, and all the battlefields of earth. See how the rock is covered with vegetation: houseleek here, celandine there, and saxifrage — how early it comes out, close to the snow ; while mosses and lichens grow everywhere! Beauty pastures even on the rocks — God feeding it out of the clouds: He holds forth a cup, and every little moss comes and drinks out of it and is filled with life.

"What does it all mean ? Is God bo liberal, that, after drawing use for the customers at his universe of a shop, he lets the tap run awhile merely for the beauty of the stream? Use costs us hard work, but the beauty of nature costs nothing. He throws it in as I do the twine and paper with a pound of cheese. No ; for that I get pay for in another way. He gives it, just as I gave little Bosanna Murphy, the Irish girl with the drunken father who went to the house of correction for beating his family — thank God I don't sell rum — just as I gave Bosie an orange last Friday when she came to buy the saltfish. That is it; he gives' it in. 'Don't charge anything for that,’ as I told poor little Bosie, who had been crying for her good-for-nothing father: 'We don't ask anything for that. I give it to you that you may be a good girl and happy, and know there is somebody richer than you who takes an interest in you; to let you know somebody loves you.' How she dried her tears and did thank me!

"Well, it must be a good God who makes such a world as this, and when we only pay for the dry saltfish of use—often with tears in our eyes — pats us on the head, flings in this orange of beauty and makes no charge, ' so that you may be a good girl and happy, and know that some-