Poor, dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the
wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the
air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic
herbs, or green tea, or mouldy books. Your forms are bent and
flattened into every ugly and distorted shape. Your lovely colors are
faded,--white changed to black, yellow to dirty white, gorgeous
scarlet to brick color, purple to muddy brown. Poor things! Who drew
you from your native woods and brooks, to press you flat, and dry your
moisture up, and paste you down helplessly upon your backs, such
mocking shadows of your former grace and beauty?
Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it! It was I. In my early years I
searched the woods and meadows, scaled rocks, forded bogs, and
scrutinized each shady thicket, with murderous intent. I bore my
drooping victims home, and sacrificed them relentlessly to
science. With my own hand I turned the screw that crushed out all that
was lovely and graceful and delicate about them. How I wearied myself
over that flower-press! How anxiously I watched over the stiff stalks
and shrivelled leaves,--all that was left! How perseveringly I changed
and dried the papers, jammed my fingers between the heavy boards, and
blistered my hands with that obstinate screw! And how cordially I
hated it all! I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of
finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but
as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a
stern sense of duty. Now, thanks to the busy little fingers that
passed over these leaves, I have a fund of amusement laid up for me;
for every page has its story, and each mutilated flower is the centre
of a beautiful picture. Here the ludicrous and the pathetic are so
exquisitely blended, that I laugh with a regretful feeling at my
heart, and sigh even when smiles are on my face. The first few pages
are light and joyous, full of a child's warm impulses and ready zeal,
and enlivened here and there by some roguish caprice. That was the
time when, in my simplicity, I loved dandelions and buttercups, and
could see beauty even in the common white-weed of the fields. Ah!
here they are, arranged in whimsical positions,--Clover and Sorrel,
Violets and Blue-eyed Grass, Peppergrass and Dock (O, how hard
that was to press!), Mouse-Ear and Yarrow, Shepherd's Purse,
Buttercups, and full-blown Dandelion, Succory, and Chickweed, and
Gill-run-over-the-ground,--with their homeliest names written in
sprawling characters, all down hill, beneath them. I did not aspire to
botanical names in those days. I thought nothing was unfit for my new
Herbarium. Such was my zeal, that I believe I should have filled it
entirely in a few days, if I had not been counselled to make a
judicious selection. I had a faculty for bringing home plants
impossible to press, and insisting upon making the experiment. I slept
for a week with my bed-post tilted up on a huge book, wherein reposed
a water-lily, obstinately refusing to lie flat. All kinds of woody
plants, too, were my delight, though they invariably came out of the
press as they went in, except that the leaves were in every variety of
unnatural position. I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately
and graceful green ferns, and finding them all "cockled up," as the
phrase went, when I got home. I believe I made some experiments on a
horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my
Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful. How happy
children are with any new possession! I thought there never was any
thing quite equal to my new book. All the girls had them, with neat
marbled covers, and white paper within, and each one was determined to
make hers the best of the whole. When pasting day came, there was an
intense excitement. We all daubed our little fingers to our heart's
content, and our faces too, as to that. I remember perfectly the
sensation of smiling, after the paste stiffened. We spattered our
desks, and pasted the wrong side of the flowers, and stuck the leaves
together, and got every thing a little one-sided, and, in short,
became so worried and heated and vexed, that we did not hunt for any
more flowers for a long time after the first pasting day.
In the mean while my ideas had undergone a change. I had become much
more ambitious. A hew page brings flowers of a higher order, and,
beneath them, besides the common name, appears a sounding botanical
title; ay, still more, the class and order are written in full. Poor
things! How many of your species must have been pulled to pieces by
inexperienced hands, to ascertain the exact number of stamens, and
their relative positions! I feel, now, a tenderness for the shrinking,
delicate wild flowers, that makes me hesitate even to pick them from
their shady retreats; but _then_, such was my ardor for investigation,
the more I loved them, and the more beautiful they seemed, the more
eagerly I tore them to fragments. Let the ingenious student analyze
bits of brass wire, and reduce to its simple elements as much
gunpowder as he pleases, but I raise my voice against this wanton
destruction of rare and beautiful flowers. No chemical process can
ever restore _them_.
As I glance over this new page, I see a merry troop of little girls,
crowding around their kind teacher, trying to restrain their
superabundant spirits, and restless activity, till they may give them
free scope in the woods. Passing up the street, they are joined by
fresh recruits, who come dancing out of the houses, with baskets, and
trowels, and tin boxes, and delightfully mysterious suppers packed
away nicely, to be eaten in the most romantic place that can be
found,--provided there is no danger of snakes, or ivy. Where they are
going I should find it impossible to say, until I have consulted the
new leaf just turned over. Here, side by side, are the wild Columbine
and the cheerful little Bethlehem Star. They grew, I remember, upon
Powder-House Hill, so named from the massive granite building upon its
summit, which we never dared to go near, for fear of an explosion. The
hill was rough, rocky, barren, and in some places quite steep. In the
clefts of the rocks, generally far above our reach, the bright red
columbines stood in groups, drooping their graceful heads. Some of the
rocks were worn to a perfect polish by the feet of daring sliders. It
was a dangerous pastime even to the most experienced. A loss of
balance, a slight deviation from the beaten track, a trip in a hollow,
or a momentary entanglement in your dress,--and you are lost! I
declined joining in the diversion ever after the first attempt, which
was nothing but a headlong plunge from top to bottom. But though I
heroically stood aloof while the girls were enjoying the sport, and
making the air ring with their laughter, I was sure, afterwards, to
come upon the slippery places unintentionally, and take a slide
whether I would or not. I had, I remember, a most unfortunate
propensity for climbing and scrambling, choosing the worst paths, and
daring the others to follow my lead on precarious footholds. It was
unfortunate, because I seldom came forth from these trials unscathed.
I was always tearing my dresses in clambering over fences, or bumping
my head in creeping under. Where others cleared brooks with a light
spring, I landed in the middle. I was sure to pick out spongy, oozy,
slippery grass to stand upon, in marshy land, or was yet more likely
to slump through over shoes in black mud. Banks always caved in
beneath my feet, unexpectedly. Brambles seemed to enter into a
conspiracy to lay violent hands on me, and hidden boughs lay in wait
to trip me up. Moss and bark scaled off the trunks of fallen trees,
bearing me with it when I was least on my guard, or the trunks
themselves, solid enough to all appearance, crushed to powder beneath
my unwary tread. Even the stone walls deserted me. I made use of one
as a bridge, one day, to reach a golden cowslip that grew temptingly
in a swamp; but a treacherous stone rolled off with me, and a perfect
avalanche of huge rocks followed, splashing the muddy water all over
me as I sat, helplessly, buoyed up by the tall grass. I regret to say,
I forgot the cowslip.