Having been taught that God created the heavens, earth and all
things therein, I understood it to mean a literal creation of each
separate thing and creature, as when my father cut down a tree and
hewed it into a beam. I would spend hours sitting so immovably
among the flowers of our garden that the butterflies would mistake
me for a plant and alight on my head and hands, while I strove to
conceive the greatness of a Being who could devise and colour all
those different butterfly wings. I would try to decide whether
He created the birds, flowers, or butterflies first; ultimately
coming to the conclusion that He put His most exquisite material
into the butterflies, and then did the best He could with what
remained, on the birds and flowers.
In my home there was a cellar window on the south, covered with
wire screening, that was my individual property. Father placed a
box beneath it so that I could reach the sill easily, and there
were very few butterflies or insects common to eastern North
America a specimen of which had not spent some days on that screen,
feasted on leaves and flowers, drunk from saucers of sweetened
water, been admired and studied in minutest detail, and then set
free to enjoy life as before.
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