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Worth Better than Show

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 17, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 20.

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Worth Better than Show.

A YOUNG oriental prince was visiting at the castle of a duke in one of the finest countries in England. He looked from his window into a beautiful garden, and inhaled the fragrance which was wafted toward him by the gentle breath of June.
“What exquisite perfume,” he cried; “bring me, I pray you, the flower that so delights my sense. See you yon stately stalk, bearing on its shaft those gorgeous lilies, whose snowy petals are veined with blood-red lines and with violet shade; that is undoubtedly the plant I seek.”
They brought him the curious lily of Africa.
“Its odor is nauseating,” he said, “but bring me that flower of a hue so much deeper and richer than even the beautiful roses of my own fair land. See how it glows like flame!—surely a rich odor should distill from that regal plant.”
It was a dahlia, and its scent was even less agreeable than that of the lily.
“Can it be, then, the large white blossoms clustered on yonder bush, or the blue cups on the neighboring shrub?” he asked.
No, the snowball and campanula proved alike scentless. Various plants yielded their odorless buds or broad-spreading petals for his inspection. But he found not among them what he sought.
“Surely, it must be that golden ball,” he said; “for so showy a blossom should at least charm the nostrils as well as the eye.”
“Faugh!” it was a marigold.
At length they placed in his hand a wee brown blossom.
“So unpretending a thing as this cannot surely be that for which I seek,” exclaimed the prince with a vexed air—“this appears to be nothing better than a weed.”
He cautiously lifted it to his face.
“Is it possible?” he cried. “Is it really this unobtrusive brown weed which gives forth so precious an odor? Why, it hangs over the whole garden, and comes fanning in at my window like the very breath of health and purity. What is the name of this little darling?”
“Precisely that, your highness,” answered his attendant; “this flower is called ‘mignonette, the little darling.’”
“Wonderful! wonderful!” repeated the astonished prince, placing it in his bosom.
“Thus your highness perceives,” remarked his tutor, gravely, “that the humble and unpretending often exhale the most precious virtues.”