December 1, 1851.
MY HERBARIUM.
Poor, dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the
wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the
air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic
herbs, or green tea, or mouldy books. Your forms are bent and
flattened into every ugly and distorted shape. Your lovely colors are
faded,--white changed to black, yellow to dirty white, gorgeous
scarlet to brick color, purple to muddy brown. Poor things! Who drew
you from your native woods and brooks, to press you flat, and dry your
moisture up, and paste you down helplessly upon your backs, such
mocking shadows of your former grace and beauty?
Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it! It was I. In my early years I
searched the woods and meadows, scaled rocks, forded bogs, and
scrutinized each shady thicket, with murderous intent. I bore my
drooping victims home, and sacrificed them relentlessly to
science. With my own hand I turned the screw that crushed out all that
was lovely and graceful and delicate about them. How I wearied myself
over that flower-press! How anxiously I watched over the stiff stalks
and shrivelled leaves,--all that was left! How perseveringly I changed
and dried the papers, jammed my fingers between the heavy boards, and
blistered my hands with that obstinate screw! And how cordially I
hated it all! I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of
finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but
as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a
stern sense of duty.
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