Let each one have a ruled blank book of _good size_ to write down the botanical and common name of every flower. How many flowers do you think you can find in April? and who will find the most? NOBLESSE OBLIGE. BY V. G. SMITH. Those of you who have studied French can translate this motto, and those who have not may perhaps guess that it means "nobility obliges"; but it is a favorite expression with so many different people, and it seems to mean such different things to different persons, that perhaps it may be worth while to tell a few anecdotes about what nobility has been supposed to oblige us to do. When James I. of England was a little boy in Scotland, he had an extremely clever tutor, George Buchanan. Now Buchanan was a great Latin scholar. He wrote verses, and was called the Scotch Virgil. Of course he was very ambitious that his royal pupil should be a good Latin scholar too, and the books say he "_whipped_ so much knowledge into him" that James was called the "British Solomon." This was the approved way in Great Britain at that time to educate boys. But there is a fact about which most of the books are silent: Buchanan and his friends reasoned that though it was quite true that James could never learn Latin unless some one was whipped, it would be a dreadful thing to strike a boy of the blood royal, and so they arranged that another boy should live at court, who should be whipped every time James failed in his declensions and conjugations. This seems to have been a very satisfactory arrangement, and you see, in this case, "nobility obliged" somebody else to be punished when the "nobility" had done wrong. This is the sense in which a great many splendid and magnificent people, with crowns on their heads and sceptres in their hands, have understood the motto. Tradition does not say what James himself thought about it. Perhaps he worked all the harder with his lessons, and felt that "nobility obliged" him not to let any one else suffer for his faults. If that was so, it was not a bad plan, after all. There is a better sense in which some have understood the motto. Perhaps some of you have read the touching letter of the Prince Imperial before he went to the fatal Zululand, where he was so cruelly murdered. The poor boy felt as if he had no object in England. He thought of the great deeds of the other Napoleons, and was stung at his own inaction. There seemed to be no duty left for him to do, in the way of fighting; but fight he must, to show he was as brave as the rest of his family. They say he was a gentle, affectionate, noble-spirited boy, and it seems as if he thought others would suppose he was weak unless he did some deed of daring. _His_ nobility obliged him to be foremost in the most desperate places; and so he died, and the world mourned for him.