wager] 



SPRING WILD FLOWERS 



175 



This appeal is quite universal. Children are drawn into the 

 woodlands. They roam the meadows and play by the warming 

 stream. Young lovers bind their vows under the seal of the 

 violet. The middle-aged carry their babes into the flower-strewn 

 stretches and tarry a time to rest from the stress of the world's 

 work. The aged, flower in hand, feel again the throb of youth, 

 and live over its golden days. 



To know and respect the wild flowers as they come; to call 



Fig. 1. The earliest and bravest is the Spring Beauty 



them by name; to be acquainted with the times of their coming 

 and the places of their abode; to see in them the operation of 

 great and fundamental principles of life — and not, only, a pleasing 

 combination of form and color — to do this— and let them live — is to 

 have won an intimacy, and a source of pleasure, well worth striving 

 for. Then one is a part of the great movement of the season. 

 His sativsfaction is gained from the contemplation of the wild 

 flower as a part of the whole scheme of life. It is a crcatvirc to be 

 viewed with tenderness and awe — and not to be pulled up and 

 carried away, lifeless and lim]). We may note some of the com- 

 monest of these early blooming flowers. 



