Article September 24, 1904 Issue

The Ministry of Bitter Herbs

KATHARINE J. SMITH.

To-day , I drew from the grass a slender, benighted dandelion blossom, ripe and ready for its sowing, and watched the tiny unnumbered seeds floating so gaily away. Gently and steadily they journeyed outward and upward, glistening like silver motes in the rain-washed air.

"Why are they thus fashioned, and what keeps them from falling?" I questioned, and the response to my thought proved an interesting lesson in physics, and gave an enriched conception of the manifestations of Truth.

Catching one of the drifting atoms I saw that the seed was provided with an airy filament of down, forming a perfectly proportioned parachute which sustained and guided a seed many times its weight. All my life I had watched these midget airships of nature come and go, bearing abroad their freight of fruit from the parent granary; yet I had never in this wise even endeavored to apprehend that infinite Principle which governs what we call physics as well as metaphysics. Many outstripped my sense of sight, for "the wind bloweth where it listeth;" some traveled in fairy squandrons, noiseless in their contact, unharmed in their collisions, till, lingeringly, each tiny craft found anchor in the long grasses, in thickets of field daisies, and under the dark leaves of fern and phlox.

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