The Pearl BoxContaining One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People
in his garden stood, At twilight's pensive hour, His little daughter by his side, was gazing on a flower. 

   "Oh, pick that little blossom, Pa,"    The little prattler said,   "It is the fairest one that blooms Within that lonely bed." 

   The father plucked the chosen flower, And gave it to his child; With parted lips and sparkling eye, She seized the gift and smiled. 

   "O Pa—who made this pretty flower, This little violet blue; Who gave it such a fragrant smell, And such a lovely hue?" 

   A change came o'er the father's brow, His eye grew strangely wild, New thoughts within him had been stirred By that sweet, artless child. 

   The truth flashed on the father's mind, The truth in all its power;   "There is a God, my child," said he,   "Who made that little flower." 

 

     ANNE CLEAVELAND. 

     Anne was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. She had a good New England school education, and was well bred and well taught at home in the virtues and manners that constitute domestic social life. Her father died a year before her marriage. He left a will dividing his property equally between his son and daughter, giving to the son the homestead with all its accumulated riches, and to the daughter the largest share of the personal property amounting to 6 or 7000 dollars. This little fortune became at Anne's marriage the property of her husband. It would seem that the property of a woman received from her father should be her's. But the laws of a barbarous age fixed it otherwise. 

     Anne married John Warren, who was the youngest child, daintly bred by his parents. He opened a dry good store in a small town in the vicinity of B——, where he invested Annie's property. He was a farmer, and did not think of the qualifications necessary to a successful merchant. For five or six years he went on tolerably, living genteelly and recklessly, expecting that every year's gain would make up the excess of the past. When sixteen years of their married life had passed, they were living in a single room in the crowded street of R——. Every penny of the inheritance was gone—three children had died—three survived; a girl of fifteen years, whom the mother was educating to be a teacher—a boy of twelve who was living at home, and Jessy, a pale, 
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