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The Home Circle

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 11, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 2.

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The Home Circle.

By Margaret J. Preston

ANISE AND CUMMIN.

WEARY with homely duties done, Tired through treading day by day, Over and over from sun to sun, One and the same small round alway, Under her breath I heard her say:
"Oh! for the sweep of the keen-edged scythe, Oh! for the swaths, when the reaping's o'er, Proof of the toil's success. I tithe Anise and cummin—such petty store! Cummin and anise—nothing more!
"Only a meagre garden-space, Out of the world so rich and broad— Only a strip of standing-place! Only a patch of herb-strown sod Given, in which to work for God!
"Yet is my hand as full of care Under the shine and frost and rain, Tending and weeding and watching there, Even as though I deemed a wain Were to be piled with sheaves of grain.
"Then when the work is done what cheer Have I to greet me, great or small? What that shall show how year by year, Patient I've wrought at duty's call? Anise and cummin—that is all!"
Turning, I raised the drooping head, Just as I heard a sob arise: "Anise and cummin and mint," I said (Kissing her over her aching eyes), "Even our Lord doth not despise.
"Think you he looks for the headed wheat Out of your plot of garden ground? Think you he counts as incomplete Service that from such scanty bound Yields him the tithing he has found?
"What are to him the world's wide plains? Him who hath never a need to fill Even one garner with our small grains? Yet, if the plot is yours to till, Tithe him the anise and cummin still?" —Margaret J. Preston, in Independent.