In Belgium the people have a custom of decorating their churches with a profusion of flowers during the month of May, and indeed in other countries of Catholic Europe. Large pyramids of flowers cover the altars, and vases of wonderful beauty adorn these sacred places. Many a herbarium of the wealthy bestows its rarest gifts to beautify the rites of religion. Hands great and small gather their tributes from gardens and groves, to crown their sanctuary with the emblems of love and beauty.

One never forgets a scene like this. The first time I crossed from Dover to Ostend was during a night in May. As usual, the streets of Dover were all in an uproar. Our boat rocked athwart the wave crests in a style

that tried the stoutest stomachs. The night was dark and full of groanings. At early dawn we landed at Ostend. Already the streets were thronged with people going to church. I followed the stream to see what it all meant. The church was almost full of females. They all wore black cloaks, with hoods which well nigh concealed their faces. There were no pews. On chairs, they sat and knelt on the damp pavement in prayer. Their black cloaks gave the whole a dreary aspect. In striking contrast to their dark, mournful garments were the stacks of flowers on and around the altar, filling the building with sweet fragrance. Coming out of the church, the sun was just rising. The large trees through the village were vocal with the morning song of birds. It was a charming sequel to the stormy, nauseous night.

When I was a boy, I took great pleasure in May-day sports. And since I have become a man, I have not put away these childish things. We should never lose our sympathy for the pure, innocent, and beautiful things that charmed us in childhood. To me it is a sweet comfort that

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky;

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The child is father to the man,
And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Although I cannot often go a-Maying with my merry little friends, my heart always goes with them. Indeed I cannot remember a first day of May which I did not set apart to pleasing and pure meditations of this sort. I could prove this to my friendly reader from my journal written in foreign lands.

Twice I have gone Maying beyond the broad Atlantic. The above beautiful little poem of Wordsworth's reminds me of one instance.

For

it was in a district of Scotland, which his heart has admired and his pen adorned:

From Sterling Castle we had seen

The mazy Forth unravelled.

Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay,
And with the Tweed had travelled;
And when we came to Clovenford
Then said my "winsome Marrow:"
"Whate'er betide, we'll turn aside,
And see the Braes of Yarrow."

From Sterling Castle I too started, not for the Braes of Yarrow, but for Loch Katrine. It was a charming morning, on the first day of May. The distance to the lake is twenty miles. As there was no public conveyance running, thither, I concluded to adopt the more manly method, and travel afoot. I had a light heart, and a light knapsack as well. Besides, this is the first of May, and I can pluck many a flower in field and wayside as I stroll leisurely along. And so I did. With my cloak and little knapsack hung on my back, I joined the birds in humming merry tunes, and plucked and fondled flowers. Instead of fences, they have thornhedges here. And these sheltered the more tender plants from the chilling winds of early Spring.

As is usual with children, the forenoon was glorious. The afternoon excessively fatiguing. By the time I had walked twelve miles I became footsore and hungry. Occasionally I met with a wayside hut, where I begged for bread and got none. Rest I could get beneath a hedge-row; bread the poor people had none to spare. But I needed shelter for the night. And so I limped along till every step was a torture. At length I spied a carter coming, with a quantity of coal, on a worn-out cart, pulled by a staggering old gray horse, which, like myself, seemed to step on coals of fire. The poor beast tugged and trembled beneath its burden with uncomplaining pain. Would it be a Christian act to add one hundred and sixty pounds to its burden?

"Stop, stranger. Can I get a seat on thy cart? I am a weary traveller, footsore, famishing and forlorn. Pity the sorrows of a friend of Scotland! I'll pay thee thy wages, only help me."

A

He eyed me from head to foot, evidently not knowing what to make of this singular petition Might I not have some ill designs on him? highwayman, perhaps? He took me through a cross examination. Who was I? Whence came I? Whither going? How could he carry me? "Look at yonder auld nag," he said, pointing to his horse, limping along with pain, was it not ready to sink under its burden? And then there was no seat in the cart. Surely I would not venture to sit on the sharp edges of the coal?" Aye, would I; and pay for it too.

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The bargain was closed. On the top of the coal pile I was perched, and I assure thee, patient reader, that the softest beds of downy ease can not compare with my lofty seat just there and then. To be sure the cart creaked as if ready to fall to pieces, and the horse tottered along in mute sorrow. But a shipwrecked mariner can scarcely get astride of a log or plank on the troubled waves, with greater relief than I mounted the heap of coal.

A right good fellow was th's unpolished Scotchman. His hands and face were black, h's clothes dirty and full of rents, and his "bonnet" looked as if it might have dated from the days of Robert Bruce. But he had a warm, kindly heart, and walked four miles so that I could ride. He worked hard to lead an honest life, and keep his wife and children. Little knew he of letters. And his speech was in the rude Scotch brogue of former centuries. But I say, a blessing on this toilworn son of Scotland.

We passed through a hamlet. Children dropped their playthings and ran shouting after the cart. Women came to the doors with sleeves rolled up to the'r elbows, looking at the carter and his passenger. “Hallo,

Robie, what man is that?" came from every side. All manner of sport did I and Robie give these simple people, while the faithful old gray dragged me towards Loch Katrine on this first day of May.

One year later the first of May found me on the summit of Mount Lebanon. During the night we had encamped on the banks of a brook, near a village of about a hundred families. When we pitched our tents, the women watched us from the house-tops, and groups of swarthy Arab children looked shyly at us from a distance, while the starving dogs seemed eager to devour us. The next day was to bring us to Damascus. Our cook prepared us an early breakfast. At seven we decamped. The muleteers rolled the tents together, and tied the baggage on the horses and Down this babbling brook we leisurely rode, here and there alighting to pluck a flower. A few Arab warriors joined our caravan, mounted on gay horses, and armed with spears. As our beasts of burden could not travel beyond a walk, we had time to indulge in feats of horsemanship with our Ishmaelite friends.

But the main feature of the day was the flowers. As we approached the plain of Damascus, the ground was literally carpeted with them. To meet a familiar flower in a foreign land is like meeting the face of a fond friend. One feels like kissing the petals and saying, "God bless you my dear; how very glad I am to meet you." Even toward the solitary mullen stalk, lank and homely, my heart went out in tenderest affection. The morning glories opened their mouth and heart wide to receive the dew and the blessing of the rising sun. The daffodil, too, greeted me with its usual modest smile. Most literally, in these glens of Lebanon—

In examining my portfolio, I find that nearly all the flowers I gathered on that May day near Damascus are yellow. That evening I wrote in my journal: "I thought of pleasant Maying parties at home."

How often have these flowers bloomed here in the ages past! Abraham saw them, and his servant Eliezer of Damascus, and Lot, and Jacob, and Rachel, and Solomon, who found botanical specimens here, and "spake of trees from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." Frail and fading flowers evermore rise from their graves and bloom themselves over again.

Speaking with a frend about the cheering loveliness of Spring, he remarked: "I, too, enjoy it; but it is a joy shaded with sadness. I am painfully oppressed with a sense of the ephemeral nature of Spring joys. Will not these flowers fade ere long, and the warbling of birds be hushed, and the bright garments of May be exchanged for the sombre apparel of December? It may be unwise to pine with unrest amid so much pleasant cheer-foolish in May to borrow sorrow from December. But God gave me a flower, and when in fairest bloom she faded and fell off, and I laid her in the silent grave, and with her laid part of my heart there. And that is why Spring, and flowers, and singing birds bring me sadness." 'Tis all so. But do not these flowers arise from the grave every Spring, always in the same form and color, and not in another? And so He tells us, every year of our life, that the pious dead shall rise again, beautified

In

with an eternal bloom. Those that die young, will always remain young. It will always be May to the believing who die in the May of life. that world of love undying, they reckon not as we do here. As Moultrie sweetly says:

"I had a boy, a third sweet boy; his age I cannot tell,

For they reckon not by years or months where he is gone to dwell,"

"The Winter is past." And a good, old-fashioned Winter, too, was that of 1866-67. The depth and duration of the snows that fell at regular intervals in this latitude, no less than the intensity of the cold, sadly spoiled some plausible theories that we have seen advanced of late years on the assumption, that our winters are gradually getting shorter and milder. To many self-satisfied, scientific theorists, as well as to many unscientific weather prognosticators, the question may be put, as in the days of Job, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail? Great things doeth God which we cannot comprehend. For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth. Then the beasts go into dens and remain in their places. By the breath of God frost is given." What has become of the croakers, who complainingly predicted a repetition of the injury done to unprotected crops by the severe frosts of the previous year? Reverently and gratefully should they ponder the covenant promise of God to Noah-"While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and rain, summer and winter, and day and night shall not Still doth our Heavenly Father cause grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man. Still is "His tender mercy over all His works." To protect the tender vegetation, He covers the earth as with a

cease."