anything like sorrow?
Cheery, cheery, always cheery,
Always cheery, never weary,
E'en with frozen sod close bound,
E'en with snow all piled around,
E'en with the frosts upon the ground,
Your little tender roots to chill!
O, what a royal little will
You have, you little gladsome thing,
You pretty, pretty flower of spring,
You little, little weesome mite,
You tiny, tiny little sprite!
E'en now the snows are at your feet,
And piled a hundred times your height,
Close, close beside your face so sweet!
And yet you smile, you pretty thing,
You pretty, pretty flower of spring,
You little, little, wee, wee thing!
And do not seem to care a bit,
And look as happy, every whit,
As any other flower of spring.
And what a lesson, too, you bring
To all of us, you little thing!
You show us how to persevere,
You show us how a happy cheer
May always on the face appear,
If God we trust and God we fear;
For God is every, every where,
And this the flower doth declare,--
The tiny, tiny little flower,
The weesome, weesome little flower,
The little, smiling, gladsome thing,
The pretty, pretty flower of spring,
The little, little, wee, wee thing.

"There, now you have it!" exclaimed the Captain, drawing a very long
breath, and looking around, no doubt to see the impression he had
produced,--"there you have it, my dears!"

The children all expressed themselves highly delighted with this effort
of the Captain's in the poetical way, and they all declared if that
wasn't a song they "would like to see one."

Thus greatly flattered by the pleasure the children received from his
recitation of what had become old to him, and deeply rooted in his
memory, the Captain resumed once more the thread of his narrative, or,
rather, "once more picked up the broken yarn, and spun away," as he
would have more graphically expressed it.

* * * * *

"Well, well," continued the Captain, "you see our little flower died
after a while, and all the other little flowers died; and this brought
us to the end of our third summer on the island and into the third
winter.

"This winter passed away as the previous ones had done, and we felt
still greater resignation.

"'Here we are forever,' said the Dean, 'and that we must make up our
minds to. It is G