Mary C. M. Phillips

While driving home from Starbucks, sipping an iced coffee, I pulled over to the side of the road for a yard sale.

Two older gentlemen were selling old books and antique framed prints.  

I picked up a children’s storybook entitled “Good Time Story Book” (McLoughlin Bros. New York, no date of publication) for $2 which seemed like a good deal and skimmed through the musty pages; thick frayed pages; worn, but full of beautiful pencil-drawings, hymns, and poetry.

Each poem, although meant for children, had something bittersweet to offer.

In the middle of the book — page numbers omitted — an old man sits forlorn in a chair while a young girl seems to offer some tea and an encouraging word.  Below is the poem written by “Mrs. Albert Smith” that accompanies the illustration …

*      *     *

______________________________________________________________

Scatter Seeds of Kindness –

Strange we never prize the music

  Till the sweet-voiced bird has flown!

Strange that we should slight the violets

  Till the lovely flowers are gone!

Strange that summer skies and sunshine

  Never seem one-half so fair,

As when winter’s snowy pinions

  Shake the white down in the air.

And then at last the last verse, prettier than the first….

  *  *  *  *  *  *

Oh, there’s many a wayworn wanderer,

             Whom the cold world treats with scorn,

Who has often wept in secret,

              Wishing he had ne’er been born’

Let us those remember daily

              In our prayers to God on high,

While we scatter seeds of kindness

              For our reaping by and by.  

So…my two dollars were well spent having reaped some inspiration from Mrs. Albert Smith.  The book — now the summit amongst a small stack of others —  on a table (which shares some local yard-sale heritage) next to an armchair in the living room; a new item with plans of being picked up one day by a friend or wayworn wanderer as seeds of kindness and hospitality are sowed and scattered in my own life.

The meager price being less than the tasty but quickly-consumed iced-coffee which now, in retrospect, seems (at least in contrast)  to have been a complete rip off.

blog entry by Mrs. Mark Phillips