Music of the Wild 



almost white. These are the gloves the foxes wear 

 when they travel the forest softly. Cultivated rel- 

 atives of the family are not nearly so beautiful as 

 the wild species. 



I think this is true of the wild flowers, vines, 

 and plants everywhere. Their hothouse relatives 

 do not compare with them. Field and forest flow- 

 ers are of more delicate color, they are simple and 

 natural, and there is a touch of pure wildness in 

 them akin to a streak in every heart. Of late peo- 

 ple have been realizing this, and they have made 

 efforts, not always agreeable to the plants, to re- 

 move and set them around houses and in gardens. 

 Such flowers usually die a lingering death because 

 they can not survive out of their element. The 

 foxglove enters a more vigorous protest than any. 

 It is as if the old mother of the family feared 

 that when we saw her glorious shade-children we 

 W 7 ould steal them from their damp, dark home ; and 

 so, with the cunning of her namesakes, the foxes, 

 she taught all her family to reach down and find 

 the roots of surrounding trees, twine around them, 

 and grow fast, until they became veritable para- 

 sites and not only clung for protection, but to suck 

 life, so that they quickly withered and died if torn 

 away. The effort to transplant foxglove always 

 reminds me of an attempt to remove old people 

 who have lived long on one spot and sent the roots 

 of their affections clinging around things they 

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