INTRODUCTION. 13 



beauties of our gardens and green-houses, there are floral 

 treasures few have dreamed of. The road sides, the fields, 

 the meadows, the river side, the woods, are teeming with 

 them delicate flowers, graceful grasses, filmy ferns, ra- 

 diant lichens, and lovely mosses. 



Have you never gathered these ? Then let us take you 

 by the hand on some sunny day in early June, and lead you 

 with us. Sit with us on the lap of Nature, and cull her 

 precious but ever-renewed store, and you will find a new 

 and unimagined pleasure, a joy as free as God's own sun 

 and air, the child of sunlight and vernal breezes. 



Did you ever think of the difference in meaning between 

 the two verbs, to live and to exist f Did you ever think 

 how few people live, compared with those who exist ? Did 

 you ever think there may be a blindness far worse than 

 loss of vision a blindness of the spirit's eye to the beauty 

 which the hand of a bountiful Creator has so lavishly 

 spread around us ? And again for this I write ; to tell you 

 of that beauty, to open the eye to it ; not to tell you where 

 to find it, for it is every where on this broad earth ; but, by 

 pointing out its most striking features, to gradually lead 

 you to see it all around. 



And from this contemplation of Nature's beauty there 



