Flowers in Colorado. 



is hardly a color or a shape I do not know by sight and 

 by heart, and as for the music of delight which the bands 

 play, its memory is so vivid with me that I think its 

 rhythm would never cease to cheer me if I were ban- 

 ished for ever to Arctic snows. 



The first Colorado flower I saw was the great blue 

 windflower, or anemone. It was brought to me one 

 morning, late in April, when snow was lying on the 

 ground, and our strange spring-winter seemed to be com- 

 ing on fiercely. The flower was only half open, and only 

 half way out of a gray, furry sheath some two inches long ; 

 it looked like a Maltese kitten's head, with sharp-pointed 

 blue ears, the daintiest, most wrapped-up little blossom. 

 " A crocus, out in chinchilla fur ! " I exclaimed. 



" Not a crocus at all ; an anemone," said they who 

 knew. 



It is very hard, at first, to believe that these anemones 

 do not belong to the crocus family. They push up through 

 the earth in clusters of conical, gray, hairy buds, and open 

 cautiously, an inch or two from the ground, precisely as 

 the crocuses do ; but day by day, inches at a time, the 

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