) years, by stiff
joints and clumsy movements, by clinging to her winter's rest and her
warm coverlet of snow, forgetting to push up the blue-eyed violets in
the spring, or neglecting to unpack the fresh green robes of the trees.
No, indeed! The blessed mother spins around the sun as gayly as she did
in her first year. She rises from her winter sleep fresh and young as
ever. Every new violet is as exquisitely tinted, as sweetly scented, as
its predecessors of a thousand years ago. Each new maple-leaf opens as
delicate and lovely as the first one that ever came out of its tightly
packed bud in the spring. Mother Nature never grows old.

But the human race changes in the same way that each one of us does.
The race had its childhood when men and women played the games that are
now left to you youngsters. We can even see the change in our own day.
Some of us--who are not grandmothers, either--can remember when youth
of fourteen and fifteen played many games which, nowadays, an
unfortunate damsel of six years--ruffled, embroidered, and white
gowned, with delicate shoes, and hips in the vice-like grasp of a
modern sash--feels are altogether too young for her. I dare say I shall
live to see the once-beloved dolls abandoned to babies; and I fear the
next generation will find a Latin grammar in the cradle instead of a
rattle-box, and baby cutting his teeth scientifically, with a surgical
instrument, instead of on a rubber ring.

Well, well! What _do_ you suppose our great-grandchildren will do?

We must not let these old-fashioned customs be forgotten, and I want to
tell you the story of May-day. A curious tale is told of the beginning
of the May-day celebration, which is of more venerable age than perhaps
you know. You shall hear it, and then you can believe as much as you
choose, as all the rest of the world takes the liberty of doing; for
although the grave old Roman writers put it in their books for truth,
it is very much doubted by our modern wiseheads, because it is so
unreasonable, and so inelegant (as our dainty critic says). As though
the world was always reasonable, forsooth! or undoubted historical
facts did not sometimes lack the important quality of elegance!

However it may be, here is the story: Many hundred years ago,--about
two hundred before Christ, in fact,--there lived in Rome a beautiful
woman named Flora. Had she lived in these luxurious days, she would
have enjoyed another name or two; but in those simp