Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DEATH OF THE LADY-BIRD. 21 The bereaved father was more alone than they. Care, and poverty, and scorn, anxiety and grief, had made him weak in body and in mind, perhaps childish—perhaps doating in his desolation. He kept the dead rose, and he also kept the living Lady-bird—watched it—tended it—even till he loved and missed it, when it too died. And this was the reason why our old gentleman, who at Providence Cottage had no garden, kept in a glass-case white roses and red Lady-birds. chapter{Section 4 COMING OUT. Look at this beautiful world, and read the truth In her fair page; see every season brings New change to her of everlasting yonth— Still the green soil, with joyous living things Swarms—the wide air is full of joyous wings.—Bryant. Old May Day.—Now is May arrived in earnest—the real flowering May of the Old Style and the old Poets; when kings and queens were wont to "come out," and meet, as they went a Maying, all the more glorious things " come out" too, and " coming out" still, bright and beautiful as ever, now that of all these royal personages even the old bones are crumbled into dust. COMING OUT. 23 " Coming out!" what a multitude of pleasant notions are associated with this expression—the very motto for the season, now inscribed in living characters on the unfolding scroll of nature. Who can want an exhortation to " come out" aud read it ? Not the flaxen-headed village children, who "coming out" of school, hie shouting to the wood and meadow, where they spell it (each after his fashion) with a merry laugh. Not the captives set free,—be it from durance, from disease, or labour. These from the dark-barred prison—from the close sick chamber,—from the foetid factory "coming out" themselves, all read the bright inscription in the glo...