An Early Spring Walk 



nearly all the early spring flowers are notice- 

 ably delicate in texture and fragile and 

 dainty in form. The coarser, apparently 

 stronger, flowers come later. It is one of 

 those paradoxes of which inscrutable na- 

 ture is so fond. She loves to astonish us 

 by sending up her whitest lily out of the 

 black mire, and setting her most fragile, 

 baby-like flowers on the edge of a snow- 

 bank. 



I picked some of the most vividly pink 

 arbutus blossoms, on this same afternoon, 

 along the edge of the woods. None so fra- 

 grant and so richly tinted will be found 

 later. The pure white blossoms predomi- 

 nate as the season advances, larger and 

 creamier and more cloyingly sweet in per- 

 fume than the pink firstlings, but not so 

 delicate, so blushingly beautiful, and so 

 spicily fragrant. I found also a few tiny 

 golden saucers of cinquefoil, timid and 

 pinched, as if regretful of having opened 

 so soon. 



Every run I crossed, and every swampy 



place under the edge of the woods, had from 



two to a dozen of the sharp-pointed, purplish 



spathes of the skunk-cabbage thrusting up 



27 



