I had a faculty for bringing home plants
impossible to press, and insisting upon making the experiment. I slept
for a week with my bed-post tilted up on a huge book, wherein reposed
a water-lily, obstinately refusing to lie flat. All kinds of woody
plants, too, were my delight, though they invariably came out of the
press as they went in, except that the leaves were in every variety of
unnatural position. I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately
and graceful green ferns, and finding them all "cockled up," as the
phrase went, when I got home. I believe I made some experiments on a
horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my
Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful. How happy
children are with any new possession! I thought there never was any
thing quite equal to my new book. All the girls had them, with neat
marbled covers, and white paper within, and each one was determined to
make hers the best of the whole. When pasting day came, there was an
intense excitement. We all daubed our little fingers to our heart's
content, and our faces too, as to that. I remember perfectly the
sensation of smiling, after the paste stiffened. We spattered our
desks, and pasted the wrong side of the flowers, and stuck the leaves
together, and got every thing a little one-sided, and, in short,
became so worried and heated and vexed, that we did not hunt for any
more flowers for a long time after the first pasting day.
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