LAST WORDS OF THE POET HEINE.

O OF the many touching tributes paid to flowers, there is a beautiful one associated with the closing hours of Henry Heine, the poet. He was dying in Paris. The doctor was paying his usual visit, when Heine pressed his hand and said: "Doctor, you are my friend, I ask a last favor. Tell me the truth—the end is approaching, is it not?"

The doctor was silent.

"Thank you," said Heine calmly.

"Have you any request to make?" asked the doctor, moved to tears.

"Yes," replied the poet; "my wife sleeps—do not disturb her. Take from the table the fragrant flowers she brought me this morning. I love flowers so dearly. Thanks—place them upon my breast." He paused, as he inhaled their perfume. His eyes closed, and he murmured: "Flowers, flowers, how beautiful is Nature!" These were his last words.

THE OLD MAN AND THE FLOWERS.

A few years since the Belfast (Me.) Journal gave this touching incident: "One day last week an elderly man, known to our people as an honest and hard-working citizen, was walking slowly up Main street. There was sorrow in his countenance, and the shadow of grief upon his face. Opposite the Savings Bank his eye caught sight of the flowering Oleander, that with other plants fill the bay-window of the banking-room. He looked at it long and wistfully. At length he pushed open the door, and approaching Mr. Q., said:

"'Will you give me a few of those flowers?'

"The cashier, leaving the counting of money and the computing of interest, came around the counter, bent down the plant, cut off a cluster of blossoms, and placed it in the man's toil-hardened hand. His curiosity led him to ask:

"'What do you want them for?'

"'My little granddaughter died of scarlet fever last night,' the man replied with faltering voice, 'and I want to put them in her coffin.'

"Blessed be flowers, that can thus solace the bereavement of death and lend their brightness as a bloom, to the last resting-place of the loved one."

CONVERTED BY A FLOWER.

There is a beautiful incident told of a Texas gentleman who was an unbeliever in the Christian religion. One day he was walking in the woods, reading the writings of Plato. He came to where the great writer uses the phrase, "God geometrizes." He thought to himself, "If I could only see plan and order in God's works, I could be a believer." Just then he saw a little Texas Star at his feet. He picked it up and then thoughtlessly began to count its petals. He found there were five. He counted the stamens, and there were five of them. He counted the divisions at the base of the flower, there were five of them. He then set about multiplying these three fives to see how many chances there were of a flower being brought into existence without the aid of mind, and having in it these three fives. The chances against it were one hundred and twenty-five to one. He thought that was very strange. He examined another flower, and found it the same. He multiplied one hundred and twenty-five by itself, to see how many chances there were against there being two flowers, each having these exact relations of numbers. He found the chances against it were thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five to one. But all around him were multitudes of these little flowers, and they had been growing and blooming there for years. He thought this showed the order of intelligence, and that the mind that ordained it was God. And so he shut up his book, picked up the little flower, kissed it, and exclaimed: "Bloom on little flowers; sing on little birds; you have a God, and I have a God; the God that made these little flowers made me."