An Early Spring Walk 



nearly all the early spring flowers are notice 

 ably delicate in texture and fragile and 

 dainty in form. The coarser, apparently 

 stronger, flowers come later. It is one of 

 those paradoxes of which inscrutable na 

 ture is so fond. She loves to astonish us 

 by sending up her whitest lily out of the 

 black mire, and setting her most fragile, 

 baby-like flowers on the edge of a snow 

 bank. 



I picked some of the most vividly pink 

 arbutus blossoms, on this same afternoon, 

 along the edge of the woods. None so fra 

 grant and so richly tinted will be found 

 later. The pure white blossoms predomi 

 nate as the season advances, larger and 

 creamier and more cloyingly sweet in per 

 fume than the pink firstlings, but not so 

 delicate, so blushingly beautiful, and so 

 spicily fragrant. I found also a few tiny 

 golden saucers of cinquefoil, timid and 

 pinched, as if regretful of having opened 

 so soon. 



Every run I crossed, and every swampy 



place under the edge of the woods, had from 



two to a dozen of the sharp-pointed, purplish 



spathes of the skunk-cabbage thrusting up 



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