But even then it seems as if the table of beauty had been spread for
the joy of a higher visitor, and in obedience to secret orders which
you have not heard.
Have you ever found the fringed gentian?
"Just before the snows,
There came a purple creature
That lavished all the hill:
And summer hid her forehead,
And mockery was still.
The frosts were her condition:
The Tyrian would not come
Until the North evoked her,--
'Creator, shall I bloom?'"
There are strange freaks of fortune in the finding of wild flowers,
and curious coincidences which make us feel as if some one were
playing friendly tricks on us. I remember reading, one evening in
May, a passage in a good book called THE PROCESSION OF THE FLOWERS,
in which Colonel Higginson describes the singular luck that a friend
of his enjoyed, year after year, in finding the rare blossoms of the
double rueanemone. It seems that this man needed only to take a
walk in the suburbs of any town, and he would come upon a bed of
these flowers, without effort or design. I envied him his good
fortune, for I had never discovered even one of them. But the next
morning, as I strolled out to fish the Swiftwater, down below Billy
Lerns's spring-house I found a green bank in the shadow of the wood
all bespangled with tiny, trembling, twofold stars,--double
rueanemones, for luck! It was a favourable omen, and that day I
came home with a creel full of trout.
Pages:
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89