Moss rose

“ The spring with its showers passed away, and the beautiful summer came, and Jacob Dobbin was able to sit at his cottage door, breathing in the pure country air, and admiring what was to him the loveliest object in nature—namely, one rich, swelling bud upon his moss-rose tree. ”

“ While thus engaged one day, the young squire came running along, and his eye fell upon Jacob's rose. "Hallo," cried he with delight—"a moss-rose! Ha, ha!—the gardener said we had not even one blown in our garden; but here's a rare beauty!" and in a moment James Courtenay had bounded over the little garden gate, and stood beside the rose bush. In another instant his knife was out of his pocket, and his hand was approaching the tree.
"Stop, stop!" cried Jacob Dobbin; [15] "pray don't cut it,—'tis our only rose ”

“ I see now how unfit I was to be tried as they were; if I could not bear the loss of one moss-rose patiently for Christ's sake, how could I have borne fire and prison, and such like things?"
"Ah, Jacob," said the old man, "'tis in little common trials such as [17] we meet with every day, that, by God's grace, such a spirit is reared within us as was in the hearts of the great martyrs of olden time;—tell me, can you forgive the young squire?" ”

“ Compare James Courtenay's present troubles,—his torture of mind, his pain of body, his risk of losing his life, and the almost momentary enjoyment which he had in plundering his poor neighbour of his moss-rose,—and see how Satan cheats in his promises of enjoyment from sin.
Dear young reader! let not Satan persuade you that there is any profit in sin—momentary pleasure there may indeed be, but it is soon gone, and then come sorrow and distress. Sin is a sweet cup with bitter dregs, and he who drinks the little sweet that there is, must drink the dregs also. ”

“ Poor old Leonard Dobbin was just as much frightened as Jim Meyers and his father had been, at the summons to attend the squire. He had a [31] clear conscience, however; he felt that he had not wronged the squire in anything; and so, washing himself and putting on his best Sunday clothes, he made his way to the Hall as quickly as he could.
"Leonard Dobbin," said the squire, "I charge you, upon pain of my worst displeasure, to tell me all you know about this story of your late son's moss-rose tree. You need not be afraid to tell me all ”

“ Some of [193] the ash tree boles are heavily draped in a fur woven inextricably of dark green and fine-leaved ivy, pale green moss over which hover pendulous drops of gold, silver lichen, and ferns green and amber. Out of rock or wall gushes bright, crystal water, losing itself in moss and herbage below, or received into small stone tanks, and turned into a darkly gleaming, golden creature that throbs under the rain. ”

“ The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky; and by-and-by, in a year, or two years, or many years, behold the complete inscription—HERE LIETH THE BODY, and all the rest of the tender falsehood—beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab! It becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. ”

“ But fair the exil'd Palm-tree grew
Midst foliage of no kindred hue;
Thro' the laburnum's dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the moss-beds at its feet. ”

“ Quickened into life by her presence and word, over all the barren fields the soft and tender grass springs up; the moss becomes aspiring, too, even the humble moss, and disowning its gray garments, it dons the more beautiful and universal green livery. ”

“ A dark-coloured moss, which presents a warm green in the sun, covered the lower masses and relieved and supported the brighter hues, while a brilliant iris shone steadily in the spray, and blended into perfect harmony the lighter hues of the higher rocks and the whiteness of the torrent rushing over them. ”

“ Preferred Habitat - Rocky ground, hillsides. Flowering Season - April-June Distribution - Southern New York to Florida, westward to Michigan and Kentucky.
A charming little plant, growing in dense evergreen mats with which Nature carpets dry, sandy, and rocky hillsides, is often completely hidden beneath its wealth of flowers. Far beyond its natural range, as well as within it, the moss pink glows in gardens, cemeteries and parks, wherever there are rocks to conceal or sterile wastes to beautify. Very slight encouragement induces it to run wild. ”

“ As soon as it has started it grows and spreads very rapidly, drinking in water and air through all its cells and sending up the moss buds which swell and grow, giving out roots below and fine stems above, which soon become crowded with leaves, forming the velvety carpet we call moss. Meanwhile the soft threads below die away, giving up all their nourishment to the moss-stems, and this is why, when you take up the moss, you find each stem separate. But now comes the question, How does each stem live after the nourishing threads below have died? ”

“ On the left rose high cliffs banked with treacherous snow, and on the right rounded and broken ice piled in towers and pinnacles upon the shore. In some places round headlands it was utterly impossible to get the sledge safely past with the man and tent robes lashed on it, and one had to help him round as best he could, while the other held in the eager dogs and tried to guide the sledge. The poor brutes were so anxious to get back to the ship that constant halts were necessary to disentangle their harness, no easy task with frost-bitten fingers. ”

“ A solitary blue-purple one, fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. ”

“ A certain paraphernalia is necessary for the construction of these miniature landscapes, and the requisite materials include a supply of moss of every variety—close cushions of moss to form the mountains, flat spreading moss to clothe the rocks, white lichened moss to carpet the ground beneath the venerable pine-trees, which in themselves are especially grown and dwarfed, till at the age of four or five years they will only have attained the imposing height of as many inches ”

“ And what fruit of pleasure had James Courtenay from his plunder of Jacob Dobbin's rose? Where was that rose? It had long since faded; its leaves were mingled with the dust upon which it had been thrown; yet for the sake of the transient enjoyment of possessing that flower a few days before abundance would have made their appearance in his own garden, he had brought upon himself all this woe. Poor, very poor indeed, are the pleasures of sin; [41] and when they have been enjoyed, they are like the ashes of a fire that has burned out. ”

“ Such a definition of twilight is as convenient as any other, and has the advantage of being familiar to some people at least, as it is that which usually regulates the firing of the morning gun in garrison towns. After this date nothing but a faint violet glow towards the south, not bright enough to hide the stars, and that too lessening every day, marked the whereabouts of the mid-day sun. We were not at once left in darkness, however, for the moon rose, and for ten periods of twenty-four hours—one cannot call them days—climbed, and then declined spirally through the heavens. ”

“ Use different kinds of moss for different trees, if you have a variety. Pick the dainty moss apart fibre by fibre and glue the pieces one at a time on the branches, making the foliage thicker in some places than in others; place the lightest-colored moss on the outside limbs of the trees, leaving the darker for the inner branches. Fig. 415 shows a bare tree and Fig. 416 the same in full leaf. When the trees and shrubs are ready glue them by their button-mould stands to the board.
Fig. 415.
Next the
Grass-seed Must be Sown or the sod planted that the ground may be clothed in emerald green. ”

“ On 29th February the sun rose, but those who climbed to Cairn Hill to see him were disappointed. The high flat land southwards shut him from view. On the 2nd of March, however, when we mustered as usual by sledge crews on the floes beside the ship, bright sunlight lit up the tops of the higher floebergs and shone on the upper parts of the ship’s rigging. The Greenland mountains were already pink, and as the sun approached the gap between them and Cape Rawson, half his orb was seen for a moment by a few who climbed the rigging to look for it ”

“ AS the ships returned southward, they steamed through a large “polynia,” or water-space, in Kennedy Channel. It was on a still night, late in August, and the ice-locked sea was calm enough to be the veritable “Peace Pool.” A few last fragments of polar floe lay here and there in the water, strangely reflected, and a dovekie swam beside one of them. Far away to the east, between Franklin and Crozier Islands, Cape Constitution rose above a faint line of pack. It was Kane’s farthest point. ”

“ Take the thin brown skin off of a quarter pound of cocoa, wash it in cold water, and wipe it dry; grate it fine, stir three and half ounces of butter and a quarter pound of powdered sugar, to a cream; add half teaspoonful of rose-water, half glass of wine and of brandy mixed, to them. Beat the white of six eggs till they stand alone, and then stir them into the butter and sugar; afterwards sprinkle in the grated nut, and stir hard all the time. Put puff paste into the bottom of the dish, pour in the mixture, and bake it in a moderate oven, half an hour. Grate loaf sugar over it when cold. ”

“ Sometimes he rolled himself in the sheet, and thought that he was dressed in a funeral cloak attending Jacob Dobbin's funeral, and all the while knowing that he had caused his death. At times the poor patient would attempt to spring from his bed; and now he fancied that he was being whipped [39] with the thorny branches of rose trees; and now that he was being put in prison for stealing from a poor man's garden. At one time he thought all the tenants on the estate were hunting him off it with hounds, while he was fleeing from them on his gray pony as fast as her legs could carry her ”

“ Such plants as these live and remain green in the winter, but they do not grow. If you wish to find plant life revelling in the cold damp days of winter, fearing neither frost nor snow and welcoming mist and rain, you must go to the mosses, which as autumn passes away begin to cover the wood-paths, to creep over the roots of the trees, to suck up the water in the bogs, and even to clothe dead walls and stones with a soft green carpet. And with the mosses come the lichens, those curious grey and greenish oddities which no one but a botanist would think of classing among plants. ”

“ Whisk for one hour the whites of two eggs, together with two tablespoonfuls of raspberry or red currant syrup or jelly; lay it in any form of a custard or cream, piled up to imitate rock. It may be served in a cream round it.
ALMOND CREAMS. And from sweet kernels pressed,
She tempers dulcet creams.
Milton.
Blanch and pound to a paste, with rose-water, six ounces of almonds; mix them with a pint and a half of cream which has been boiled with the peel of a small lemon; add two well-beaten eggs, and stir the whole over the fire till it be thick, taking care not to allow it to boil ”

“ That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. ”

“ They now, indeed, gave a service of love; and a service of love is as different from a service of mere duty as day is from night.
Wherever the young squire had most displayed his passionate temper, there he made a point of going, for the sake of speaking kindly, and undoing so far as he could the evil he had already done. He kept ever in mind what he had heard from Jacob Dobbin in his dream,—that there was not only a Saviour by whom [53] alone he could be saved from his sins, but also that there was a road on which it was necessary to walk; a road which ran through daily life ”

“ But there is good hope that the squire thinks of a better world, and that he would rather have his boy safe in heaven than here amid the temptations of riches again.
Oh, what a wonder that there is mercy for the greatest sinners! but oh, what misery comes of sin! "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." ”

“ The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in motionless rivers of light. ”

“ The good old labourer was afraid, with his rough hands, to touch the richly bound and gilt volume that was brought up from the library; he knew every page in his own well-thumbed old book, and in that he read, and from that he discoursed. The minister of the parish came now and again; but when he heard of what use old Leonard had been to the young squire, he said that [61] God could use the uneducated man as well as the one that was well-learned, and he rejoiced that by any instrumentality, however humble, God had in grace and mercy wrought upon the soul of this wayward boy. ”