THE MAGIC OF THE HEATHER 



"I'll warrant that Aaron's rod bore no bonnier blossoms 

 than these little stiff bushes and none more magical. For 

 every time I take up a handful of them they transport me to 

 the Highlands, and send me tramping over the braes and 

 down the burns." Van Dyke. 



WHAT potent charm have the gods bequeathed 

 this mountain blossom, that the heart of a 

 Scotsman, be his home amid the Lowland 

 peacefulness of his native land or on its stormy High- 

 land hills, clings to this moorland flower with a pathos 

 of tender, reverent emotion which the foreign world 

 gazes upon in pleased wonder and cannot interpret? 

 Is it only that the ragged spray of deep greenery 

 and purple bells calls forth, to the exiled Scotsman, 

 those sacred memories of early home ties the fond 

 clinging love for which forms so strangely a refining 

 element in the sturdy, harshly sterling Caledonian na- 

 ture? Is it that within his heart the bonnie native 

 bloom brightens anew, like a soft moonlight glow 

 creeping over some lonely barren midnight solitude, 

 the deserted waste of these fading recollections 

 lures from out the lurking shadows of his loneliness 

 those cherished scenes and friendships and severed 

 ties of "auld lang syne" and brings back, like quiv- 



