A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES 161 



less it may have been by the cloudberry on 

 Mount Clinton, I was never so taken captive 

 by a blossom. I worshiped it in silence, — 

 the grass a natural prayer-rug, — feeling all 

 the while as if I were looking upon a flower 

 just created. It would not be found in 

 Gray, I told myself. But it was ; and be- 

 fore many days, almost to my sorrow, it 

 grew to be fairly common. Once I hap- 

 pened upon a white specimen, as to which, 

 likewise, the Manual had been before me. 

 New flowers are almost as rare as new 

 thoughts. 



It was amid the dead grass and rust- 

 colored stones of this same hillside that I 

 found, also, the velvety, pansy-like variety 

 of the birdfoot violet, here and there a plant 

 surrounded by its relatives of the more 

 every-day sort. This was my first sight of 

 it ; but I saw it afterward at Natural Bridge, 

 and again at Afton, from which I infer that 

 it must be rather common in the mountain 

 region of Virginia, notwithstanding Dr. 

 Gray, who, as I now notice, speaks as if 

 Maryland were its southern limit. Indeed, 

 to judge from my hasty experience, Alle- 

 ghanian Virginia is a thriving-place of the 



