Memory Album Inscription by Rev. Thomas Stubbs

The following is a copy of what Thomas wrote on a page of someone's album.

A ROSE FOR MELLISSA'S BOUQUET

"You have presented to me your Album for to write a few sentences as a remembrance of me. Anciently an Album was a kind of white table, or registrar, in which the names of certain magistrates, public transactions &c were entered. From that it changed into a kind of common place book, found in places of ??? --- as Niagara Falls, ??? ??? Hotel--- some ??? to use for strangers & visitors to write their names, with a motto accompanying them. But now it is more like the representation of a Bouquet of flowers, one brings a dalia, another a Lilly, a third a Pink, untill your boquet becomes large & varied & beautiful & fragrant, representing those persons who placed them there. And though far away from you, they are the living flowers, beautiful & sweet. The flower that I place here, I will call it a Rose to remind you, not so much of me, as that flower which is the fairest amongst ten thousand, the alltogether lovely, the Rose of Sharon. Melissa what then so beautiful as a flower. In the delicacy of its form, the elegance of its colours --- and the exquisiteness of its fragrance. But O what an emblem of youth & its dangers too. Nipt by the chilling wind, or plucked by ??? hand, or trodden under foot by the careless passerby --- so it is with man. Thou art a flower and may thou shed around thee the fragrance of piety & virtue & whatsoever is pure and of good report. .And when the period of thy flowering and bringing forth flowers in this wilderness terminates, may the Heavenly Gardener transplant thee into that clime where the flowers never wither, never droop, never die."

Your Pastor, Thomas Stubbs

[Transcribed by Mary Lewis/Gr Gr Granddaughter]