[Show the children some shriveled plant, with withered blossoms.]
There was once a little flower that was designed by its Creator to be one of the most beautiful of the flowers of the forest, but long before it was time for this, the flower became so absorbed with thoughts of its own beauty and importance that it would have nothing to do with anything around it. It refused to push its roots down deep into the soil, and indeed held them gingerly away from it, because it was so dirty and so black. It refused to open its petals to the refreshing rain, calling it an impertinent intruder. Just as haughtily it refused to open its leaves to the sun, because it was so common, shining on all the other flowers and leaves of the neighborhood. Our foolish flower would have nothing to do with the breeze, and shrank from it because it blew over the other flowers before it came to her, and she wanted a breeze all her own. In the same manner the bees that carried pollen from flower to flower, and helped them in many useful ways, our foolish flower rejected.
And so while the other flowers, were flourishing, and were adding every day new beauties of form, and color, and fragrance, drawing them from the common elements of the sun and soil, the air andthe rain, this foolish flower of ours, withdrawn to itself in its own pride, slowly withered away, became dry and ugly, and at last was pulled up and thrown aside.
Is there among you any boy or girl so foolish that he wants the world made just for himself, and won’t have a thing if others have it? so foolish that he never thinks what he owes to the world, but only thinks of what the world, as he fancies, owes to him? In that case he will never become beautiful and strong and shapely in his character, but will wither away and become as ugly as our foolish flower.