A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES 153 



here and there a flower or a butterfly or a 

 strain of music to take u}) our tliou<^hts, as 

 we travel on toward tlie clearing at the end. 

 For the first day or two the deciduous 

 woods still showed no signs of leafage, but 

 tall, tree-like shadbushes were in flower, — 

 fair brides, veiled as no princess ever was, 



— and a solitary red maple stood blushing 

 at its own premature fruitfulness. Here a 

 man walked between acres of hepatica and 

 trailing arbutus, — the brook dividing them, 



— while the path was strewn with violets, 

 anemones, buttercups, bloodroot, and hous- 

 tonia. In one place was a patch of some 

 new yellow flowers, like five-fingers, but 

 more upright, and growing on bracted 

 scapes ; barren strawberries ( Waldsteinia) 

 Dr. Gray told me they were called, and one 

 more Latin name had blossomed into a pic- 

 ture. A manual of botany, annotated with 

 place-names and dates, gets after a time to 

 be truly excellent reading, a refreshment to 

 the soul, in winter especially, as name after 

 name calls up the living plant and all the 

 wild beauty that goes with it. And with 

 the thought of the barren strawberry I can 

 see, what I had all but forgotten, though it 



