Letters to a Friend 



way the purest creation I ever beheld. The 

 little flat, spot-like in the massive spiring woods, 

 was in splendid vesture of universal white, up 

 on which the grand forest-edge was minutely 

 repeated and covered with a close sheet of snow 

 flowers. 



Some mosses grow luxuriantly upon the dead 

 generations of their own species. The common 

 snow flowers belong to the sky and in storms 

 are blown about like ripe petals in an orchard. 

 They settle on the ground, the bottom of the 

 atmospheric sea, like mud or leaves in a lake, 

 and upon this soil, this field of broken sky 

 flowers, grows a luxuriant carpet of crystal veg 

 etation complete and ripe in a single night. 



I never before knew that these mountain 

 snow plants were so variable and abundant, 

 forming such bushy clumps and thickets and 

 palmy, ferny groves. Wading waist-deep, I had 

 a fine opportunity for observing them, but they 

 shrink from human breath, not the only flow 

 ers which do so, evidently not made for man, 

 neither the flowers composing the snow which 

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