XIV. THE wild flowers have been slow in showing themselves, having doubtless learned caution from past experience, but the week just gone, with its many hours of warm sunshine, followed by soft April showers, has brought great changes. Within two or three days I have found, besides the hepatica, the first comer, the cinque-foil, the dandelion, the common chickweed, shepherd's purse (is the size of the seed vessels of this a true indication of the small wants or only of the small attainments of the pastoral part of the community?) the dog'stooth violet in quantity, the bloodroot, the lovely, modest little quaker lady or innocence, and the purple trillium, which has not very often happened in my path in the times that are gone. Nothing could be more dainty than the houstonia - the little quaker lady. And it is very trustful and confiding withal, and will bloom just as courageously and perseveringly in a saucer at your window if you take up a clump of it, and keep it properly moistened. It is a thirsty little creature, but then it only drinks the most harmless of beverages. One of my neighbours found a root of it as late as Thanksgiving Day last year, and put it into a tiny vase, which was lent to me for a few days more than a month ago, crowned with over fifty delicate blossoms, just touched with a tint of the vernal sky. the A marvellous change has taken place in the appearance of the fields and of the trees and shrubs since the showers began. On the sward Nature has been spreading her green tints with a lavish hand, willows have hung out their golden plumes, and are now putting on a green mantle, and everywhere the buds have been swelling and unfolding, so that the woods and shrubberies have become more dense and richer in colour. A writer in the "London Spectator” has told very daintily the story of the coming of the buds and blossoms of trees as they are seen in old England, and says that to know them aright there, one must begin to observe them from the first day of the new year. And I remember that White of Selborne finds some of the spring flowers even in December. In our climate they are not so enterprising, and I am inclined to think that we enjoy them the more at their coming, because we have had such a long period when life seemed wholly to have passed from the fields and woods. I am tempted to quote here some verses of my own, published a good many years ago in another place; they were written for children - but are we not all children in the spring? Glorious sunshine flooding the earth Softly the raindrops, falling in showers, Bring down unstinted life to the flowers, Over the fields the grasses are creeping, Into the light the blossoms are peeping, In the new life that comes from thee! Hark! 'tis the birds that blithely are singing Round the just op'ning flowers! My neighbours are raking the dry leaves from their lawns, and putting their gardens in order; the road-makers are abroad, spreading soft mould over the driveways, to provide deep mudholes to burrow in when the rain comes; the farmers are busy in the fields preparing for the early crops. And even upon that portion of my "mountain meadow" which I design for a garden and orchard, the plough has been turning the rich soil up to the sun to be aired and sweetened, and what here and there appear to be only arbitrary pitfalls for the unwary are the destined homes of apple and peach and pear and cherry and plum and quince and apricot; and elsewhere, of the elm tree and the white birch. I wonder if the latter, which so generously clothes the neglected and forgotten fields, and which mounts the rough edge of the deserted gravel pit and plants its little cohorts upon the scarred hillside, will form as graceful a cluster at my bidding, to shut off too long and straight a line of wall, and mark the border of the "home-place.” On the two mornings immediately preceding the rain it was interesting to observe the casts of the earthworms thickly strewn everywhere alongside the paths, and in the pathways themselves, excepting where they had become most solid. Not a worm itself did I see, but there was scarcely a space of five inches anywhere which did not show its little curlicue of fresh soil from beneath. Not more marvellous are the great oaks that grow from the little acorns than are the stupendous changes that are effected upon the surface of the earth by these soft, limp, almost structureless bodies, as Darwin has shown. If any one has a lingering doubt as to the value of individual effort on the part of the ordinary mortal, albeit unconscious effort, and without conscious purpose, let him read the "Earthworms and Vegetable Mould," and be encouraged and consoled. Undoubtedly it is the exceptional mortals, the thinkers, the giant workers, the strong, the great, that mark epochs and lead the race forward. We see them above others as we look back over the past, like vigorous trees in the forest, like mountain |