"I suggest," wrote one little bee, "that we keep on making honey just the same, only instead of putting it together in one great lot, all tasting alike, let us keep different kinds in different combs. For instance, let one swarm gather from roses and make rose honey; another can sip the nectar from the violet and make violet honey; another can get the essence of the mint and mix it with pepper and make peppermint honey, and so on. Let us have honey of all flavors--vanilla, sarsaparilla, and so on--and then we shall never make too much. There never was too much soda-water in the world, because if you get tired of one kind you can drink another kind. I heard a little girl who was a soda-water expert say so, and it was from her remark that I got the idea. If I've won, please let me know, and I'll come up to the palace and get the hand of the Queen's eldest daughter; and if you'll send me word early enough in the day, with the size of her hand, I'll bring a nice little glove to put on it. P. S.--Do we get only one hand, or does the whole daughter go with it?" "Magnificent!" cried the Queen, in ecstasy, clapping her antennæ together. "We must award the prize to him." "I think so myself," said the Trade Secretary, "he is certainly the most original." "And a good business bee, too," said the Lord High Treasurer. "What he asks about the whole daughter proves that." "And a good husband he'll make," said the Queen, with a pleased expression. "His thinking about her gloves proves that. Are there any others?" [Illustration] "Only one," said the Trade Secretary. "From a bee who signs himself 'A Poet.'" "Oh, he can't win!" said the Queen, impatiently, for she had the idea which many wiser people have that poets are lazy. "Not likely," said the Lord High Treasurer. "I still think, your Majesty, that we ought to read what he suggests." "Very well; no doubt you are right. What is it he says?" said the Queen, with a look of resignation on her face. [Illustration] So they read the suggestion of the little poet bee, and this is the way it went: "We have made too much plain honey For the people's ready money; And the only way to keep our daily toil from being waste Is to give them something neater, Something purer, something sweeter, Something quite the like of which they never yet have had a taste. "Shall we then spend all our hours Sipping up the sweets of flowers, Sipping sweets of which they tell us that they don't want any more? Or shall we set our forces Seeking out some other sources Which will yield a store of honey of a kind not known before?