THE SEASON OF FLOWERS 179 



amount of foliage; and there is the important 

 first lesson of picking one kind at a time. Oh, 

 the hopeless flower mixtures that one sees ! 



And always know that the best of your trip 

 is what you can bring back only in your memory ; 

 the picture of the flowers where God meant them 

 to be, in their settings of meadow or prairie or 

 woodland. We have little patience with our 

 friends whose first instinct is for possession, and 

 who instantly fall to picking and digging, as soon 

 as their feet strike soft earth. 



If picking flowers is a great art, arranging them 

 is a greater. Ask the Japanese. But there is 

 safety in the rule keep to one kind at a time. 

 When you come with us you are not to violate it. 



Thus instructed, we will take you first for 

 the hepaticas that early April finds peeping out 

 on the northward slopes of the ravines on the 

 north shore. Lakeside or Winnetka or Glencoe 

 will be the place. You may bring a shoe box or 

 a tin cracker box, for you are to take some home, 

 a blue and a white and a pink-tinted one per- 

 haps, and these with their roots and much ad- 

 hering leaf mold. You must never pick the blos- 

 soms. They will only droop and wither miser- 

 ably and to no purpose. 



When you have your plants home, put them 



