The editor of the _Central Presbyterian_ moralizes on flowers from
a back yard as follows:
A lovely flower came to us last week from the back yard of a
home in the city. It was a white hyacinth, large and full, white
as the driven snow, and sweetly perfumed. And it came not from
the florist’s hothouse, nor from the fine plot at the front of
a good home, but from the little yard at the rear. What a thing
of beauty and fragrance to spring up in this homely place,
common, soiled and trampled! It is a happy thought, not uncommon
nowadays, to make the back yard, not often seen by other’s eyes,
a place of beauty and sweetness, turning the common and the
obscure into a source of pleasure and all that is wholesome and
inspiring.
One may do well to look after the back yard of his own life. He
has sometimes a front that all men see and admire. Toward his
friends and neighbors he is careful to make a fair exhibition
of good morals and courteous manner. He maintains a front with
which no fault can be found. But can the rear, the small and
commonplace, the every-day and out-of-sight part of character
and conduct, bear the same careful inspection? Are there any
fair and fragrant flowers that spring up where no man ever
looks, and only God’s eye can see?
(349)
=Character Wrought by Hardship=--See SAVED IN SERVICE.