The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1857-07-01
THE ROSE.

It is the season of the Rose. June
comes decked with roses; they bind her
brow, Intervene her tresses, cluster about
her feet, and her girdle shows Respondent
with them.
We have passion for the rose. Who,
indeed, has not? What other thing is
there in the world upon which all tastes
conjoin to praise and admire9 The rose
has its history--its thousand associations
which date as far back as mortal re-
cords extend. 1t has been no dumb, in
] animate thing IN the past. Not on, t,s.s
every poet sung of it, contributing cy8ii
his mite to the worlds admiration of its
beauty, but it has been allied with great
deeds. Christianity, Paganism, Mahom-
etism-each has always used it as a type
Of some sentiment, or recognized it as an
expression of purity and beauty. Church
affairs are decked with it; it wreathes the
tomb and the festal cup; it decks the
brow of the bride, and the bosom of the
dead; it is present at every feast, and de-
corates every altar. Only once in its his
tory--in the red and white roses of Eng
land-has is led forth to battle, or sym
bolized commotion and wa. A hundred
fanciful legends have been invented as to
its origin; how it fell from the bosom of
Aurora; how Zephyrus, enamored Of
Flora, changed himself to flower, which
Flora entrancod with passionately kissed,
and this union produced the rose; how is
sprang from the blood of Adonis washed
by the tears of Venus; how it was born
contemporaneously with Venus from the
sea foam, but perfectly white, until one
day Bacchus let drop Of his divine IL
| quor fall upon it; and many other similar
to these, including that one Of ST. Francis
who rolled himself upon thorns to mortify
his flesh, and on every spot whore the
saints blood had fallen, sprang up red and
white roses. This last tradition introdu-
ced the rose largely into the Catholic wor-
ship. Young girls strewed roses before
the cross; roses hung from st. Cecilia's
harp; angels came down from heaven to
offer roses to St. Dorothea; the Pope es-
tablished the order of the Golden Rose
There are but few items of vast Rosiana
that might be collected. We cannot re-
frain from adding an old tradition of
Summer and Flowers, we, for the first
time, recently met with.
| It seems, that before Summer came up
on the earth there were no flowers save
the few that Spring planted on the green
| borders of Winter, which were all white
or of faded yellow. These soon faded,
and then followed long series of months
| of unbroken and monotonous green
Summer had not set set its foot out of
Eden, where she had been sent to tend
the roscs-for, saving these, not rose
bloomed upon the whole face of the
earth. Years rolled away after Ewes de-
parture from the garden; the gates once
guarded by the angels, now abandoned,
crumbled into decay, and Summer at last
wearied with her solitude began to pick
her way over the ruins of the fallen pill
lars and decaying gates, which were half
buried in wild bushes and briers, and
stepped into the open sunshine Of the un-
walled earth. A dark and HOMOGENEOUS
green hung everywhere. The aowerless
foliage seemed to Summer like pail
She walked musingly along, and present
ly began to touch the earth to see if her
creative was still restrained. She smiled
to see the old flowers spring up that were
so familiar to her in Eden. Wherever
she passed. she made the green wilderness
a garden. She touched the brier, and it
shot out into roses; the woodbine, and it
burst into sun-streaked honeysuckles. -
She went on her way and every flower
she knew in Eden sprsng up in her path.
After time she was raised into the sky
and took her place among the Seasons,
and ever since dos lends in her turn to
touch the earth with her magic fingers,
until it blooms like Eden of old.
A BEAUTIFUL IDEA. - Away among
the Alleghalies there is spring, 50.
small that single OK, in a summers
day could drain it dry. 1t steals its I'M
obtrusive way among the hills, till it
spreads out in the beautiful Ohio. Then
it stretches away a thousand miles,
leaving on its banks more than hundred
villages and cites, and many thousand
cultivated farms, and bearing on its bo-
som more than half a thousand steam
boats. Then joining the Mississippi, it
stretches away and away some twelve
hundred miles more, till it falls into the
great emblem of eternity. 1t is part of
the ocean, which, obedient only to God,
shall rob and roar till the angel, with one
foot on the sea and the other on land,
shall lift up his hand to Heaven and
swear that time shall be no longer. So
with moral influence. 1t IS a rill-a riy-
lllet-- river = an ocean, boundless and
fathomless as eternity.
Always be more soil.
cite Us rerserve your innocence than con-
cerned to prove it. 1t will do to seek
good name as q primary Object
Like trying to be graneful, the effort
to bepopular will make you contemplate.
Take care of your spirit and conduct,
and your reputation will take care of it.
self. The utmost that you are called
to do as the guardian Of your reputation
is to remove injurious asperaions. Let
not your good be evil spoken Of, and
follow the highest examples in mild and
explicit self-vmdication. No reputation
can be permanent which does not spring
from principle: and he who would main
tain a good character should be mainly
solicltous to maintain conscience void of
offence towards God and towards man.