Tussy-mussies 
299 
The greatest pleasure in flower perfumes comes 
to us through the first flowers of spring. How 
we breathe in their sweetness ! Our native wild 
flowers give us the most delicate odors. The May- 
flower is, I believe, the only wild flower for which 
all country folk of New England have a sincere 
affection ; it is not only a beautiful, an enchanting 
flower, but it is so fresh, so balmy of bloom. It 
has the delicacy of texture and form characteristic 
of many of our native spring blooms, Hepatica, 
Anemone, Spring Beauty, Polygala. 
The Arethusa was one of the special favorites of 
my father and mother, who delighted in its exquisite 
fragrance. Hawthorne said of it : “ One of the deli- 
catest, gracefullest, and in every manner sweetest of 
the whole race of flowers. For a fortnight past I 
have found it in the swampy meadows, growing up 
to its chin in heaps of wet moss. Its hue is a deli- 
cate pink, of various depths of shade, and somewhat 
in the form of a Grecian helmet.” 
It pleases me to fancy that Hawthorne was like 
the Arethusa, that it was a fit symbol of the nature 
of our greatest New England genius. Perfect in 
grace and beauty, full of sentiment, classic and 
elegant of shape, it has a shrinking heart ; the 
sepals and petals rise over it and shield it, and the 
whole flower is shy and retiring, hiding in marshes 
and quaking bogs. 
It is one of our flowers which we ever regard 
singly, as an individual, a rare and fine spirit ; we 
never think of it as growing in an expanse or even 
in groups. This lovely flower has, as Landor said 
