FINDING TRAILING ARBUTUS — 33 
The flower I had seen; for friends of mine, 
knowing my wistfulness for the trailing arbutus 
at flower, had many a time sent me nosegays of 
it, so that its look I knew and its odor I had in- 
haled; but those relations were not sufficient to 
satisfy the poetry of things. Moss sent in a box 
or seen in a basket is moss truly, but moss dis- 
figured because unrelated. To see moss you 
must see it set on its bank where it makes its 
own forests and constructs its own wilderness 
and grows its own boscage. You cannot ex- 
plain moss nor catch its altogether inexplicable 
wonder except to lie down on its sward and 
scrutinize its tracery and calm where never winds 
blow loudly nor wildly but where forever rests 
the quiet as of a bird’s folded wing for sleep. 
No sample is to be accounted moss. 
Thus is the trailing arbutus. Where it grows 
and as it grows it must be met with. The sur- 
prise of finding must mingle with its delicate 
odor and beauty. Detached from where it 
roots and dreams of earliest springtime and ad- 
ventures forth first of the flowering hosts, it is 
more than lost. This wild flower is growing 
rarer year by year, more is the pity seeing it 
has commercial uses, and those who gather 
it for money and not for love have scant sense 
of the to-morrow but drag it from the mold as 
corsairs might, and so wrench root and all and 
so a flower has come to its funeral. Flowers 
sorrow not to be gathered. They were meant 
