A GUST OF WONDER 9 
abundance of flowering, perfect as a perfect rose- 
bud ready to bloom but not blooming, into 
which mass of pink loveliness came romping a 
troop of dwarf prairie roses! The clover heads 
swung lovely as evening sky-tint and the roses 
beside them and among them in full bloom! 
How it happened I cannot say. It did happen, 
is what I say. That is any happening’s perfect 
proof. Had I been asked from my watching 
wild roses in bloom, to express an opinion as to 
whether it were permissible to believe they could 
grow off a settled rooting in unplowed ground of 
prairie or of roadside or in pasture or woodland, 
I had given quick rejoinder that they could not, 
and that they had to have permanency of rooting 
which could not occur in plowed field. A plowed 
field I think to be the happiest rooting for dog- 
tooth violets. On my own little farm I have 
observed the exuberant blooming of that quiet 
memorial of the early spring. No share seems 
to uproot them. They like its surly surgery 
and with a sunny spring leap out to bloom like 
children to morning laughter. I have, not occa- 
sionally, traveled a thousand miles to see my 
dog-tooth violets bloom and felt myself amply 
repaid. But prairie roses, however, I thought 
indigenous to settled ground alone where no 
plow ever disturbs the quiet roots. They ask 
no farming save what God gives them. All the 
years of my watching for them across the sway- 
ing windy prairies had made me of settled con- 
