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THE PROFIT OF GIVING

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 13.

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THE PROFIT OF GIVING.

IN Connecticut a few years ago lived a lady who had a beautiful flower garden, in which she took great pride. The whole county was proud of it, too, and people drove miles to see it.
She fastened two large baskets on the outside of her fence next the road, and every morning they were filled with cut flowers—the large, showy kinds in one basket and the delicate, fragile ones in the other. All the school children going by helped themselves and studied the better for it, and the business men took a breath of fragrance into their dusty offices that helped the day along. Even the tramps were welcome to all the beauty they could get in their forlorn lives.
“You cut such quantities,” some one said to her, “aren’t you afraid you will rob yourself?”
“The more I cut the more I have,” she answered. “Don’t you know that if plants are allowed to go to seed they stop blooming? I love to give pleasure, and it is profit as well, for my liberal cutting is the secret of my beautiful garden. I’m like the man of whom it was said:—
“‘A man there was (tho some did count him mad), The more he gave away the more he had.’”