One day a golden-haired child, who lived where no trees or flowers grew,
was gazing wistfully through the open gate of a beautiful park, when the
gardener chanced to throw out an armful of dry cuttings. Among them the
little girl discovered one with a tiny bud just starting.
"Perhaps it will grow," she whispered to herself, and, dreaming of wide,
cool boughs and fluttering leaves, she carried it carefully home, and
planted it in the darksome area. Day after day she watched and tended
it, and when, by-and-by, another bud started, she knew that the slip had
taken root.
Years passed, and the lowly home gave place to a pleasant mansion, and
the narrow area widened into a spacious garden, where many a green tree
threw its shadow. But for the golden-haired child now grown into a
lovely maiden, the fairest and dearest of them all was the one she had
so tenderly nourished. No other tree, she thought, cast such a cool,
soft shade; in no other boughs did the birds sing so sweetly.
But while the tree lived and flourished, the young girl drooped and
faded. Sweeter and sadder grew the light in her blue eyes, till
by-and-by God's angel touched them with a dreamless sleep. Loving hands
crowned the white brow with myrtle, and under the branches she had loved
laid her tenderly to rest.
But from that hour, as if in sorrow for the one that had tended it, the
stately tree began to droop. Lower and lower bent the sad branches,
lower and lower, until they caressed the daisied mound that covered her
form.
"See!" said her young companions, "the tree weeps for her who loved it."
And they called it the Weeping Willow.
* * * * *