A Window in Arcady 
The spring beauty, too, has been roused out of its 
warm nest, and is shaking its clustered buds in the sunny 
air like rebellious clenched fists. Every lover of the vernal 
woods knows this exquisite little flower, its white petals 
flushed with auroral pink, which is shot through with red 
rays. In gathering it it is noticeable that the stems of 
the plants always snap off at or just below the ground, 
so that one rarely ever sees the roots. The reason of this 
is that the plant springs from a deep tuber which anchors 
it fast. To find the roots requires careful and persistent 
grubbing. The redman used to be a more inveterate 
hunter of spring beauties than we palefaces are, but for a 
different reason. It was those tubers that he was after, 
and when he found them he ate them with great gusto. 
They have a crisp, pleasant taste suggesting chestnuts. 
Hard by, the snowy blossoms of the blood-root are ex¬ 
panding, their stems wrapped about with the drapery of 
their one big leaf, and in stony places the chubby rosettes 
of the saxifrage are showing white dots of coming bloom 
in their centres. One naturally looks for blossoms of the 
arbutus in this goodly fellowship of early comers, for the 
poets like to tell us of its blooming by a snowbank. As a 
matter of fact, however, this flower is quite suspicious of 
such companionship, at least in our latitude, and is usually 
very cautious about uncovering its perfumed chalices before 
a number of the other wildings have gone on ahead and 
reported the coast clear. 
Fringing the ledges and carpeting the summits of the 
rocks are the evergreen polypody ferns. During the 
winter’s cold snaps they were curled into pictures of de- 
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