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growing up that has learned to appreciate the beauty of a single 
spray, be it rose, bamboo or pine, and the eye thus trained will 
soon learn that those able to go to see the flowers in their natural 
surroundings will care but little fora bunch in a vase. For the 
pleasure of those unable to ramble in wood or meadow let us 
bring home a few of the beauties—moss, grass, sedge, fungus, 
fern, and flower, and arrange them as far as possible to imitate 
their natural surroundings—yet what columbine in a vase begins 
to compare with the graceful beauty of a columbine nodding on 
a rocky ledge? 
I once read * a pleasant account of a place a friend visited in 
the country where the profusion of blossoming wild plants press- 
ing up close to the house and garden filled her with amazement 
—thick beds of violets and wild pink in the spring—ranks on 
ranks of cardinal flower and gentians in the fall, and other flowers 
in their season between. ‘How do you manage to have so 
many ?” my friend exclaimed. ‘It is the children,” replied the 
mother. ‘I have taught them to love the flowers as they grow 
—to protect and care for them, and not think they must be 
always plucking them ; it,requires some resolution not to gather 
a flower but if they cannot practice self-command now, how are 
they to learn it when they grow up?” 
Children thus brought up will be welcome visitors everywhere ; 
they will not gather the single spike of fringed orchis that we 
have been enjoying for a week on the hill-path, nor the clump of 
black-eyed Susans that nodded to us every time we stepped out 
onto the piazza, nor the starry campion that sowed itself in the 
oval ; and still less will they maraud over the place, plucking 
every one of the field lilies that are so handsome standing erect 
and stately, with the sun streaming through the red petals, 
against a background of grass and bushes, and look so common- 
place in a great crowded bunch. When we first established 
ourselves at Cape Ann we heard that these lilies had been nearly 
exterminated by people digging up the bulbs for sale, and we 
resolved that not only should our bulbs be protected but the 
*S. Minns. Rights Due to Wild Flowers. ‘‘ The Little Unity,’’ Aug. 1, 1882. 
(The same in ‘‘ The Cheerful Letter,” July, 1898. ) 
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