“Do flowers talk?” said Caroline; “I never hear Voices from mine. Mamma, you said the flowers told Wondrous things, both new and old.” “Sweet voices come from every flower, That blooms in garden, Wood or bower; Sweet, silent voices, Caroline: Come then and listen, daughter mine.” “I will to you a story tell, And you must mind The moral well; ’T will teach you a bright lesson, child, From garden flowers, and blossoms wild.” Not far from the borders of a dark wood, was a bright and cheerful-looking garden. Flowers were there, of every hue and form, growing and rejoicing beneath the beams of the summer’s sun. “Ah, how happy we are!” said the marigold to the larkspur. “Here we bloom and soar upward almost to the very sun,” said a family of sun-flowers. “Yes, and climb as high as the sky,” cried a convolvolus and jasmine, who had wound themselves round a tall princess-feather. “How brilliant and stately we are,” said the proud dahlia. “We are admired far more than those pale flowers that grow in yonder wood.” “I pity the poor faded things,” whispered a bright coreopsis. “I look down upon them,” said a fierce tiger-lily. “The sun loves the garden flowers best,” said a pansy of great beauty, to some sweet mignionette; “let us be glad that our home is in this bright place.” “I will ring a peal for very happiness,” replied a gay Canterbury bell; “for how could we exist in the gloom of that forest?” “Let us be merry and glad that we are not wood flowers,” shouted they all, with a musical laugh that rung through the wood and made the wild-flowers, wonder. A bright golden-rod, that grew on the edge of the forest, with his friend the aster, heard this conversation, and felt the injustice of it. Gracefully bowing his yellow plumes, he exclaimed, “Indeed, you do not know us; our life is the happiest in the world. In the deep woods, sheltered from the storm and heat, by the towering trees that soar above us like guardian angels, we live in peace and beauty. The sun does not always bathe us in a flood of light as he does the garden flowers, but he darts his beams through green boughs, and they come to us in tenfold beauty, scattered in a golden shower; and in the still night, the stars look down between the tops of the tall trees, and gaze silently and lovingly upon us.” The wood flowers heard the silvery tones of the golden-rod with glee, as he recounted their blessed sources of delight. “We have music too,” said he, “such as never floats through garden airs. We listen to the wind, as it sighs through the pines, and waves the bowery branches of the oak and maple; for each tree is a separate harp, that gives forth its own sweet melodies.”