A Window in Arcady 
has paused for breath, and I close my desk and go for an 
hour or two to the fields in quest of whitlow grass. In 
southeastern Pennsylvania this little plant is usually the 
first wilding of the year to bloom—barring the skunk cab¬ 
bage, which seems more of a joke than a serious blossom 
—and the finding of it is an assurance, as comforting as 
the first bluebird’s visit, that spring is really at hand. Its 
tiny white flowers are twinkling prettily in the gray mat 
of last year’s turf in old fields and on roadside banks, even 
in advance of the hepatica, or the bloodroot, or the anem¬ 
one. Common as it is, however, few people seem to regard 
the plant, or to know’ it. A small rosette of leaves which 
a dime may cover, flat to the ground, with a slender 
branched stalk two or three inches high rising from the 
centre and bearing a cluster of small flowers—that is 
whitlow grass. The seed pods are so impatient to be up 
and doing that they cannot always wait for the flowers to 
drop, but are often seen, in shape like flat spear-heads, 
protruding from the heart of the unfallen corollas. We 
may lift a few plants, root and all, and they will, if placed 
in a shallow saucer of water in a window at home, con¬ 
tinue to grow and bloom and set their seed-vessels as 
cheerfully as though they were outdoors—a sure source of 
pleasure and interest to the stay-at-homes. The flowers 
are so sensitive to shadow that they expand fully only 
when the sun shines on them, like some shy human na¬ 
tures which cannot do their best without the warmth and 
light of kindly treatment. 
The name of the whitlow grass is due to an old-time 
association of the plant with the cure of whitlow, a painful 
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