1897.] FLOWER OF THE ALMOND AND FRUIT OF THE FIG. They stood in the proudest place in the garden, in full view both from the road and from a high gallery that ran across the front of the house where the Master of the Garden lived. The house faced the west, and whenever the people came out to look at the sunset they admired the beauty of the Almond trees, with their upright shoots, tipped and starred with luminous blossoms, against the deep, rich colors in the west; and when the west faded, as it did every evening, a lamp on a high post by the gate, bigger and brighter than the brightest star, was set burning-"for what purpose," thought the Almond trees, "but to show our beauty in the night?" So they watched through the dark hours, and felt the intoxication of the keen light upon them, and marveled at their own shadows on the grass. They were somewhat troubled because so many of their blossoms were being picked; but the tree that stood nearest the house windows rose on tiptoe, and, behold! each gathered spray had been kept for especial honor. Some were grouped in vases in the room, or massed against the chimneypiece; others were set in a silver bowl in the center of a white table, under a shaded lamp, where a circle of people gazed at them, and every one praised their delicate, sumptuous beauty. But peepers as well as listeners sometimes learn unpleasant truths about themselves. "Are n't we picking too many of these blossoms?" asked the lady of the house. "I'm afraid we are wasting our almond crop." "Almond trees will never bear in this climate," said the Master of the Garden. "Better make the most of the blossoms while they last. The frost will catch them in a week or two." So the mother and children gathered the blossoms recklessly—to save them, they said. Then a snow-flaw came, and those that had been left on the trees were whiter than ever for one day, and the next day they were dead. Each had died with a black spot at its core, which means the death that has no resurrection in the fruit to come. After the snow came rain and frost, and snow again. The white Sierra descended and shook its storm-cloak in the face of laughing Spring, 939 and she fled away downward into the warm valleys. Alas, the flatterer! But the Almond trees alone had trusted her, and again their hope of fruit was lost. "Did we not say so?" muttered the Apple tree between her chattering teeth. She was the most crabbed and censorious of the sisters, and by her talk of fruit one might have supposed her own to be of the finest quality; but this was not the case, and the gardener only that year had been threatening, though she did not know it, to cut off her top and graft her with a sweeter kind. The leaves of the Almond tree are not beautiful, neither is her shape a thing to boast of. When Spring did at last come back to stay, the Almonds were the plainest of all the trees. Their blossoms were like bright candles burned to the socket, that would light no more; their "corruptible crown" of beauty had passed to other heads. No one looked at them, no one pitied them, except the Fig trees, who wondered which had most cause to mourn they, who had never had a blossom, or the Almond trees who had risked theirs and lost them all before the time of blossoms came. The Fig trees' reproach had not been taken away. While every tree around them was dressed in the pride of the crop to come, they stood flowerless and leafless, and burned with shame through all their barren shoots. When the Master of the Garden came with his children to look at them, they hung their heads and were afraid. "When will they blossom like the other trees," the children asked, "and what sort of a flower will they bear?" The Fig trees held their breath to hear the answer. "A fig tree has no flower like the other fruit trees," said the Master of the Garden. "Its blossom is contained in the fruit. You cannot see it unless you cut open the budding figs, and then you would not know it was a flower." "What is the use of having blossoms if no one ever sees them?" one of the children asked. "What is the use of doing good, unless we tell everybody and brag about it beforehand?” the father questioned, smiling. "That's what we are taught; and some persons do good in that way, and cover it up as if they were ashamed of it. And so the Fig tree does n't tell anybody when it is going to bear fruit." The Fig trees had heard their doom. To the words that followed they had not listened; nor would they have understood much more of it than the child of its father's meaning. "What is this he calls our fruit?" they asked each other in fear and loathing. "Was that our fruit, those green and purple swellings; that unspeakable weight of ugliness? Will it come, year after year, and shall we never have a flower? The burden without the honor, without the love and praise, that beauty brings: that is the beginning and the end with us. Little sister, thou art happier than we, for soon thy burden-bearing will be done. Uncover thy head and let the sunbeams slay thee, for why should such as we encumber the ground!" Trees that grow in gardens may have long memories, and nature teaches them a few things by degrees, but they can know little of what goes on in the dwellings or the brains of men, or why one man should plant and call it good, and later another come and dig up the first man's planting. But so it happened in this garden. The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner. of high distinction! They- the little aliens who had stood nearest the wall and thirsted for a bare existence were to be called to the front of the garden and have honor in the presence of all! The despised burden which they had called their deformity they heard spoken of as the rarest fruit of the garden, and themselves outvalued beyond all the other trees: for that having so little, they had done so much. Beauty, too, was theirs, it appeared, as well as excellence, though they could scarcely believe what their own ears told them; and they had a history and a family as old as those of the Almond tree, who can remember nothing that did not happen a thousand years ago, and so has never learned anything in the present. But the Fig trees would have been deeply troubled at their promotion, could they have known what it was to cost their neighbors the Almond trees. "Two we will keep for the sake of their flowers; but the others must go and give room for the Figs." So said the new Master, and so it was done. The unfruitful Almond trees were dug up and thrown over the wall — all but the two whom their sisters had ransomed with their lives; for beauty has its price in this world, and there must be some one to pay it. When another spring came round, it was the little Fig tree that stood in the bright corner where the splendor of the road-lamp shone upon its leaves all night. Its leaves were now as broad as a man's outspread hand, and its fruit was twice the size it had been the season before. Its sister trees stood round and interlaced their boughs about it. "Lean on us, little one," they said, regarding it with pride. "But you have your own load to bear." "We scarcely feel it," said the happy trees. This was true; for the burden that had seemed beyond their strength when their hearts were heavy with shame and despondency, they could bear up lightly now, since they had learned its meaning and its worth. The new Master's children were so full of the joy of spring in that mountain garden for they, too, like the little Fig trees, had been transplanted from arid ground — they had no 1897.] FLOWER OF THE ALMOND AND FRUIT OF THE FIG. words of their own in which to utter it. So their mother taught them some words from a 941 song as old, almost, as the oldest garden that was ever planted. "For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green fruit, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell." "Awake, O north wind, and come thou south, and blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof BY THE LITTLE FIG TREE. flow forth!" viously these disdainful foreigners with their sad, hungry eyes, could but talk to us, I am sure that they would tell us that they, too, would like to have the bright collars and warm blankets that these strangers wear, just as poor, ragged boys envy the boy who has a warm coat for winter; but they would also tell us, I think, that there is a story among them of which the very wise old dogs, who know the city well, are very fond of informing any one who will listen. Long, long ago, they say their ancestors too wore coats - coats of the finest silk, beautifully embroidered. That, however, was when all people were differently dressed, and there were only Greeks in Constantinople, and no people from Europe to be seen on the streets. Nowadays the Turks think otherwise about the dogs, and I feel sure that these poor little wanderers miss something more than blankets and clean brass collars-the kind words and loving treatment which most American dogs receive. You can tell that from the look in their eyes when you speak to some tired out old fellow lying on the hard pavement, or play with the jolly little puppy across the way, who is just waiting for some one, man or dog, to frolic with. It is a nicer look and a much more grateful one than you get when you throw them a piece of bread. The reason why there are so few dogs who have homes and masters is not hard to find. It is because the Turks have a queer idea it is part of their queer religion-that dogs are such unclean animals that they must never be allowed to enter a house. On the street, however, they feed them and even pet them; and when a man knows that he has done something wrong, he will often try to make up for it by feeding all the dogs he can find. Sometimes when rich Turks die they leave sums of money to be spent in feeding the street dogs, just as in America people leave money to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Turks never strike or hurt a dog; so if, as sometimes happens in Constantinople, you see a man kicking or beating some poor, howling animal, you may be very sure that he is a Greek or an Armenian. Nor do the Turks ever kill vagrant dogs, but think it right to allow them to exist as best they can. So there have come to be in the streets of Constantinople hundreds and hundreds of wolflike dogs, about the size of small setters or pointers, but different from them in that they have narrow, long heads. Yellow dogs, black dogs, brown dogs, and white dogs, you see them everywhere on the sidewalks, in the gutters, on the doorsteps, under the carriages, in every corner or hole into which a dog can creep and curl himself up into a round bunch. All day long they lie huddled up or stretched out on their sides, fast asleep, no matter how much noise goes on about them. In the busiest business streets they lie by twos and threes in the middle of the sidewalk, where hundreds of patient people step over them, or go around them, and never think of making them get out of the way. In the side streets and small squares there are often assemblages of twenty or twenty-five sleeping in the greatest peace and harmony, until some dog from another street ventures in, when there is at once a great deal of barking, and sometimes severe fighting; for even if these dogs have no homes, they have certain districts, or places, which they consider their own, and will permit no one not belonging to their particular set to enter. Thus the street of butchers in Pera, the nicest quarter of Constantinople, has some twenty or more dogs who are always to be found there. I saw two dogs lying day after day in front of one of the great banks; and one fond mother-dog brought up four puppies in an uncovered box at the gateway of the British Embassy. Although many of these patient animals are lame, and sick with mange or some other sickness to which dogs are liable, though some have no tails and others but one ear, it can at least be said that the majority look fat and hearty, as if they had plenty to eat. As soon as it is dark and the shops begin to close, the dogs commence to wander in search of food. The butcher, shutting up his shop, throws into the street the bits of meat which fell from the cleaver, and the restaurant or coffee-room keeper does the same with the bits of vegetables and bread he has left over. In the early morning the house-servants put the kitchen sweepings and the ash-barrels outside for the ash-carts, and there are always dogs on hand at once to |