hear, as they half whispered their rainy colloquies. Spring it was, or 

 early summer, but they, as I gathered, were speaking about autumn and 

 the sere leaf and the last late rose and the departure of the swallows 

 and who could blame them for having tears in their voices ? 



I made my leisure journey. Naught troubled me nor hasted me. 

 The time was God's and summer's and mine. I stopped at every 

 pastoral and grew inquisitive at every stop. Something enticed me 

 everywhere. Three hours I had, though I could use three days. One 

 can not have too much leisure with Nature. She is coy like a hermit 

 thrush, so that those who hasten may not know her; but I sped leisurely. 

 Most plants along the road I knew, some I had not seen, or, speaking 

 exactly, one, and that made me glad, because it is so good to make a 

 new friend among the flowers. One's life is infinitely enriched thereby. 

 To meet old friends in flowers or folk is delightful, and meeting new folk 

 and flowers has a tang of gladness also. One new friend among birds 

 or flowers, or gentle green among the leaves what think you of that, 

 my heart ? One white flower I met this day I had not met aforetime, 

 and the memory of its dainty beauty lingers caressingly. Five-petaled, 

 pure white as a blackberry blosom, growing low on the earth, beckoning 

 the wind, sheltered by the grasses, sometimes a few feet of ground 

 would be star-white with them, sometimes one bloomed solitary like a 

 forgotten life some one had died and left, but whether single or in 

 groups, the flower was dainty, fair, and left a gentle memory to my 

 heart. I see it yet. Along the track were no rose bushes with their 

 frowsy archings and interarchings, and had there been, the time of 

 roses was not yet. That sweetness was to be an anticipation. Not all 

 flowers bloom at once. God is too good for that. He sows his flowers 

 through all the lanes of spring, summer, autumn ; and I love him for it. 

 But, rose bushes being absent, rose blooms were present and burned 

 along the banks or flamed in the grasses like sparks from a hurrying 

 engine. They were inexpressibly beautiful. My eyes caressed them, 

 and I would linger over every flushed face I saw, as if it were the last 

 I was to set eyes upon. Seldom more than six to nine inches high, 

 they took you by surprise by a sweet surprise ; and they were always 

 fair, running in color from pure white to deep crimson, each seeming, 

 as I saw it, fairer than its sister, as each child in a family circle. Here 

 a single flame shot like a firefly's lamp, there a bank blushed into sud- 

 den flame with them. One was white sprinkled daintily with pink, 

 another was bronzed as with some chaste enamel, another pink as a 



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