THE REIGN OF THE ROSE by Mable Horton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 7, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 36.

THE REIGN OF THE ROSE.

By Mable Horton

[Mable Horton, in Sunday-School Advocate.]

A DOOR opened, and a panful of rubbish was thrown into the alley. It contained a tuft of green, feathery parsley, only a little wilted. Two children caught the flash of green at the same instant, and both sprang for it.

“Give it to me; I saw it first!” cried the little girl.

“But I got it first, and its mine; ta-ta,” said the boy, and, sticking the trophy into the buttonhole of his ragged jacket, he strutted away, leaving behind a very angry and dirty little face, which looked as if its owner was undecided whether to hurl after him opprobrious epithets or to sit down and cry.

A woman, with a covered basket, coming through the alley, had seen the little skirmish, and stopped by the side of the vanquished child. She had a gentle face, and wore a quaint little black bonnet with white ties.

“Do you like flowers? See, here is a pretty one,” and, lifting the cover from her basket, she took out a great, dewy, pink rose, put it into the child's hand, and hurried away. Three or four little ragamuffins were on the scene immediately, crying, “O lady, please give me a flower!” but the deaconess had escaped what would soon have been a mob of clamoring children by turning into a side passage and shutting the door behind her. The child held the flower a moment, looking at it stupidly, and then, as faces and voices grew more numerous, and were turned toward her, she suddenly scudded down the alley.

“O mother, look! just look! A lady give it to me!” She burst into a little, foul-smelling, half-lighted room. The mother, sitting on the edge of a tumbled bed, regarded the rose with a mild interest.

“Ain't it a beauty? Put some water in a dish, Anette, an' set it on the table by the winder, so it'll keep fresh.”

The dish indicated was a broken-nosed pitcher, none too clean, and the rose hung over the edge until only its outer petals and its green calyx were to be seen.

“Say, mother, don't yer think it would look better in the glass?”

The “glass,” the only tumbler the establishment contained, was stained with ancient beverages of a questionable character, and opaque with the marks of dirty fingers. Anette took it to the hydrant, where she rinsed and polished it until it shone, and brought it in, clear and dripping. Then ten minutes were spent strengthening the stem of the rose with a hairpin, that it might stand at a proper angle to display all its beauties.

Never was a fairer rose—pale-tinted, beautifully

cupped, crisply curved, sweet-breathed; a dainty thing, looking as much out of place in that miserable dwelling as a golden-haired princess in a coal-mine.

“Mother, don't you think the rose 'ud look prettier ef they was suthin' white under it—suthin' clean and white?”

The woman looked at it considerately. She was very fat and very dirty. Almost unconsciously she pulled down the baggy folds of her limp calico dress, and with both hands smoothed her unkempt hair. Then she touched the rose with her stubby forefinger as one would lift a baby's chin.

“I'll see if I kin find suthin'.”

She went to a broken trunk and began to turn over a heterogeneous collection of old rags. From somewhere near the bottom she produced a damask towel, worn and ragged, but tolerably clean—a relic of better days, perhaps, or included in some collection of old clothes from the charitably inclined. Anette took the towel and spread it on the table, folding it carefully, so that the ragged places were hidden. Exactly in the center of this she placed the rose in its tumbler, where it stood like a queen in its little space of cleanliness and purity.

One little clean spot! But it acted like a magnet. The woman's eyes turned toward it continually, and as for Anette, she forgot everything else, and gave herself up to the worship of the rose.

“Mother, let's wash up the dishes and put away these things on the table. They don't look nice with the rose.”

“Good land! What's come over ye?” was the mother's only protest. But the dishes were washed, and the sway of the rose extended over the entire table, which was reduced to a condition of comparative cleanliness and order.

Four days the rose stood in the fulness of its beauty, and each day extended its empire of purity. The room was swept, the windows cleaned, and every day Anette washed her face and hands, and made a pretense, at least, of combing her tangled hair.

On the morning of the fifth day, without any sign of drooping or decay, the petals let go their hold, and lay like pink shells on the white cloth. Anette gathered them up, kissed them, and then laid them away in a box that she bought of Sadie Jones for a cent.

The room had been cleaner and hearts gentler for those four days, and yet the rose had said nothing. It had only been sweet and pure, and had not held itself aloof from anything.