JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT
ONE of the earliest wild flowers to show its head above ground is
Jack-in-the-pulpit. It is an odd plant and what we call the flower is
not the blossom at all, but a protecting leaf called a spathe which
surrounds the tiny flowers growing on the club-shaped spike (or spadix)
standing upright inside.
That is a good thing to know and remember, but what concerns us now is
that there is a pulpit with its curved sounding-board--or perhaps it is
a striped awning--overhead, and that in the pulpit is Jack.
He is a cheerful little preacher and his pulpit is somewhat gayer than
we usually see, but no one ever told Jack that to be good he must be
solemn and that to preach he must have a pulpit rich and sombre. The
good God who made him gave him his pretty, striped pulpit with its
striped awning to shelter it, and Jack goes on preaching his cheerful
sermons from this as long as he lives. Hear what some one has said of
him:
"Jack-in-the-Pulpit preaches to-day,
Under the green trees, just over the way;
Squirrel and Song-Sparrow high on their perch,
Hear the sweet lily-bells ringing to church.
"Come, hear what his reverence rises to say,
In his low, painted pulpit, this calm Sabbath day.
Fair is the canopy over him seen
Pencilled by Nature's hand, black, brown, and green."
Some people who love the woods and the wild flowers can understand
Jack's wild-wood language. They will tell you that over and over again
he is saying: "Come into the clean, shady woods and learn to love
all the wonderful living, growing things to be found here. Come into
the green woods and hear what we can tell you of beauty and love and
kindness; of courage and perseverance and strength, for plants must
have courage and perseverance as well as strength in order to live."
All the time these plants are working in the ground and above it to
make their flowers perfect and their seeds fruitful. Sometimes it is
difficult work, too, if the soil does not give them enough food, or a
dry summer chokes them with thirst. Sometimes they must struggle hard
to gain a footing between the rocks where they were told to grow, or to
keep from being crowded out by stronger, coarser plants that are called
weeds.
But they keep on trying to do their part and to do it well; they work
and love, and their children, the blossoms, laugh, laugh, laugh with
the happiness of it all.
[Illustration: Fig.7 - Cut a hole at the back of the Pulpit.]
Now if Jack seems to you to stand too still in his pulpit while he
preaches all this, why you can make him move around. He can turn first
to one side then to the other, and he can lean forward over the front
with extended arms as some preachers do when they are very much in
earnest.
For this you will first have to cut a hole at the back of the pulpit
near the bottom, as is shown in Fig. 7, then, slipping your knife
inside, cut Jack loose from the flower and drop him out from the top by
turning the pulpit upside down.
[Illustration: Fig.8 - The Spike.]
Cut off the lower, thin part of the spike to which the arrow points in
Fig. 8 and, after puncturing a deep hole in the end, push in a very
slender twig or grass-stem. Fig. 9 shows how this is done. For arms
that will make Jack seem more like a little man, push a short piece of
grass-stem through the spike near the top where you see it in Fig. 9.
Make a hole all the way through the spike with a pin so that the arms
will slip in easily.
[Illustration: Fig.9 - This is Jack.]
When you are ready for Jack to preach put him in his pulpit, sliding
the grass-stem through the hole at the back. While you hold the stem of
the pulpit in one hand take the grass-stem in the other and, by moving
it up and down, twisting it one way, then the other, and tipping it up,
you can make him rise up tall and straight, then sink down; you can
make him turn to the right and to the left and lean forward. That is
being active enough in such a small pulpit, isn't it?