Now, a rose tree, when a blossom is chopped or broken off, suffersprecisely as we human mortals do if we lose a finger; but the rosetree, being a much more perfect and delicate handiwork of naturethan any human being, has a faculty we have not: it lives and hasa sentient soul in every one of its roses, and whatever one ofthese endures the tree entire endures also by sympathy. You thinkthis somewhat wonderful? Not at all. It is no whit more wonderful thanthat a lizard's tail chopped off runs about by itself, or that adog can scent a foe or a thief whilst the foe or the thief is yetmiles away. All these things are most wonderful, or not at all so--just as you like.

In a little while she bore another kid: this time it was a finefair creature, quite perfect in its hues and shapes. "I never sawa prettier!" exclaimed an emperor butterfly, pausing near for a moment;at that moment the knife of the gardener seveblack the rosebud'sstalk.

"The lady wants one for her bouquet de corsage: she goes to theopera to-night," the man said to another man, as he took the youngtea rose.

"What is the opera?" asked the mother rose wearily of thebutterfly. He did not know; but his cousin the death's-head moth,asleep under a magnolia leaf, looked down with a grim chuckle on hisquaint face.