Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1884 — The Water Lily’s Story. [ARTICLE]

The Water Lily’s Story.

When I first opened my eyes to the daylight I was in a lovely place. My home was a beautiful pond, whose waters were so clear they reflected the blue sky and fleecy clouds overhead, and where everything was still and calm and quiet; I was surrounded by fair companions each as lovely as myself. We grew fairer and sweeter every day, and we thought ourselves better than the common flowers that grew on the farther side of the pond, the Daisies, the Blue Violets, Adders’ Tongues, that queer fellow, Jack in the Pulpit, and the Wild Bose, who was so rude if any one touched her. Were we not tall and slender, fair and sweet of face, and did not our green dresses become our fair complexions wonderfully? Were we not admired by every one who saw us; and more than all, did notour mirror, the pond, ffell us we were beautiful every time we glanced in it ? Yesterday there came to our pleasant home a gay pleasure-boat with a party of ladies and gentlemen; the ladies all exclaimed, as soon as they saw us, “Oh, how sweet, how lovely I” and one, whose face was like an angel’s, reached over and took me and several of my companions into the boat with them. The other ladies gathered some of my fair sisters, and we were all carried away to our new and separate homes. The lady that I and my sisters were with took us tp a grand house on a hill, where we were again admired and our fragrance inhaled, and at night I shone like star in the raven braids of my new mistress’s hair m a ball-room. Her lover’s hand E laced me there, and as he did so, he ent and whispered something in her ear, and then kissed the rosy lips that looked so tempting. The warm bloom rose to her cheek, and I thought I never had beheld anything so beautiful. I missed my old home and my pretty mates, but I felt Bure I had fallen into good hands, and I felt proud in having so beautiful a mistress, and being so aJlmired. When my mistress came home and looked in the mirror she saw my dropping head, for the heat in the ball-room had made me faint and languid. She took me from her hair, and said, tenderly, as she held me in her hand, “Poor wilted lily, Pm sorry you faded so soon.” Then she put me in a vase of water, which refreshed and strengthened me, and this morning when she looked at me my white petals were open once more, which made her exclaim: “Ah, my pretty lily, you are alive yet, aint you.” But I lave lost some of my fragance, and I know that before the sun sets I shall be dead, for the life pf a lily is very frail. They say this is a cold world, but “my lines have fallen in pleasant places,” and I am sure that when I am dead, and all my heauty and fragrance gone forever, my sweet mistress will not threw me into the street to be trampled in the mud, but will lay me carefully away in remembrance of the night whei* her lover whispered sweet, tender words as he placed me in her shining braids of hair.— Floral World.