The girl loved flowers, so she took the white rose to her room and put it in water.  Then with the coin she went to drown her misery in drink.  Forty-eight hours later she had slept off the debauch, and taking the flower from the vase she said:  “Ah! that represents my life.  Once I was as pure as the rose when the good woman gave it to me.  Those withered petals represent the withered graces of my life.”  From out that little flower an arrow went to the heart of Delia Laughlin.  She took the street car and went to the Door of Hope Mission.  Mrs. Whittemore met her and they talked together.  While the girl wept Mrs. Whittemore prayed; she said:  “O God, this poor girl has no other friend than you.  Her father’s home is closed against her.  You have promised, when father and mother forsake, you will take the deserted one.  Won’t you take her now?” And God did take her; from that hour she was safe in the cleft of the Rock of Ages.  When she addressed twelve hundred inmates of Auburn prison, a reporter said:  “Never did John Wesley, John Knox, or Martin Luther do greater work for the Master.”  When laid in her casket in the Door of Hope Mission a few years later, a New York paper said:  “Never did a fairer face or more eloquent tongue do work in slum life than Delia Laughlin.”

  “The stone o’er which you trample,
    May be a diamond in the rough. 
  It may never never sparkle,
    Though made of diamond stuff.

  “Because someone must find it,
    If it’s ever found;
  And then someone must grind it,
    If it’s ever ground.

  “But when it’s found, and when it’s ground,
    And when it’s burnished bright;
  Then henceforth a diamond crowned
    ’Twill shine with lustrous light.”

You can’t tell what seed will grow.

After the Civil War I lived for two years in Richmond, Kentucky.  During that time the Klu Klux movement broke out in fury.  Men were hanged, others whipped and driven from the county.  On my way to market one morning I saw a man hanging from a limb of a tree in the court-house yard.  On his sleeve was pinned a piece of paper, on which was written, “Let no one touch this body until the sun goes down.”  All day that body hung there and not an officer of the law dared to cut the rope.  Such was the reign of terror no one offered a protest.  One Saturday night a young man named Byron was hanged in the same court-house yard.  He was the only son of a widowed mother, and he begged the mob to let him live for his mother’s sake.  Sunday morning several empty bottles lay about the tree, indicating that the men were drinking who did the deed.  The evening after the hanging I gave an address in the Methodist Church for the Good Templars.  I had no thought of referring to the hanging of young Byron, but in showing up the evils of drink, those empty bottles came to my mind, and I could imagine the old mother then weeping over her dead boy.  Without considering