Meta Book

They call them "buds" in
Boston--an abbreviation for rosebuds.
Fresh young roses of each opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and
the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what
would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be
found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting
weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in
whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains
of mortality, roses whose petals are yet unspotted by dust and rain, and
whose divine perfume the hot south wind has not scorched, nor the east
wind nipped and frozen--you are the protest, set every year among us,
against the rottenness of the world's doings, the protest of the angelic
life against the earthly, of the eternal good against the eternal bad.
John Harrington looked at Miss Thorn, and looked at her with pleasure, for
he saw that she was fair--but in spite of her newly discovered beauty he
resisted Miss Schenectady's invitation to sit down again, and departed.


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