The Transplanted Flower

"Every time a good child dies, one of God's angels comes down to earth and takes the dead child in his arms, then spreads his large white wings and flies over all the spots which the child best-loved and plucks a whole handful of flowers, which he carries up to the Almighty, that they may bloom in still greater loveliness in heaven than they did upon earth; and the Almighty presses all such flowers upon His heart, but He gives a kiss to the one He prefers, and then the flower becomes endowed with a voice and can join the choir of the blessed."

These words were spoken by one of God's angels, as he carried a dead child to heaven, and the child heard him as in a dream; and they passed over the spots in his home where the little one had played, and they passed through gardens filled with beautiful flowers.

"Which shall we take with us and transplant into the kingdom of heaven?" asked the angel.

There stood a slender, lovely rose-bush, only some wicked hand had broken the stem, so that its sprigs, loaded with half-open buds, were withering around.

"Poor rose-bush!" said the child; "let's take it, in order that it may be able to bloom above, in God's kingdom."

And the angel took it and kissed the child for its kind intention, and the little one half-opened its eyes. They plucked some of the gay, ornamental flowers, but took likewise the despised buttercup and the wild pansy.

"Now we have plenty of flowers," said the child, and the angel nodded assent; but did not yet fly upward to God. It was night, and all was quiet; they remained in the large town, and hovered over one of the narrow streets, where lay heaps of straw, ashes, and sweepings. There lay fragments of plates; pieces of plaster of Paris, rags, and old hats, and all sorts of things that had become shabby.

And amidst this heap, the angel pointed to the broken fragments of a flower-pot, and to a lump of mould that had fallen out of it, and was kept together by the roots of a large, withered field-flower, which, being worthless, had been flung into the street.

"We will take it with us," said the angel, "and I will tell you why as we fly along."

And as they flew, the angel related as follows:

"In yon narrow street, a poor, sickly boy lived in a lonely cellar. He had been bed-ridden from his childhood. In his best days, he could just walk on crutches up and down the room a couple of times, but that was all. During some days in summer the sun just shone for about half an hour on the floor of the cellar, and when the poor boy sat and warmed himself in its beams, and he saw the red blood through his delicate fingers, that he held before his face, then he considered that he had been abroad that day. All he knew of the forest and its beautiful spring verdure was from the first green sprig of beech that his neighbour's son used to bring him, and he would hold it over his head, and dream that he was under the beech-trees, amid the sunshine and the carol of birds.

"One spring day the neighbour's boy brought him some field-flowers besides, and among them there happened to be one that still retained its root, and which he therefore carefully planted in a flower-pot and placed in the window near his bed. The flower was planted by a lucky hand; it throve and put forth new shoots, and blossomed every year. It became the rarest flower garden for the sick boy, and his only little treasure here on earth; he watered it, and cherished it, and took care it should profit by every sunbeam, from the first to the last, that filtered through that lonely window, and the flower became interwoven in his very dreams; for it was for him it bloomed; for him it spread its fragrance and delighted the eye, and it was to the flower he turned in the last gasp of death, when the Lord called him. He has now been a year with his heavenly Father, and for a year did the flower stand forgotten in the window, till it withered. It was therefore cast out among the sweepings in the street on the day of moving; and this is the flower, the poor faded flower, which we have added to our nosegay, because this flower gave more joy than the rarest flower in the garden of a queen."

"And how do you know all this?" asked the child, as the angel carried him up to heaven.

"I know it," said the angel, "because I myself was the little sick boy who walked on crutches; I know my own flower."

And the child opened his eyes wide and looked full in the angel's serenely beautiful face. At the same moment, they reached the kingdom of heaven, where all was joy and blessedness.

And God pressed the child to His heart when he obtained wings like the other angel and flew hand-in-hand with him; and God pressed all the flowers to His heart, but kissed the poor withered field-flower, which then became endowed with a voice. It joined the chorus of the angels that surrounded the Almighty, where all were equally happy.

And they all sang, great and little, the good, blessed child, and the poor field-flower that lay withered and cast away among the sweepings under the rubbish of a moving day, in the narrow, dingy street.