Some of the loveliest of my early recollections are
of rambles after flowers. There was a certain "little pink and yellow
flower" (so described to me by one of my young cousins) after which I
searched a whole summer with unabated eagerness. I was fairly haunted
by its ideal image. Henry von Ofterdingen never sought with intenser
desire for his wondrous blue flower, nor more vainly; for I never
found it. One day, this same cousin and myself, while wandering in
the woods, found ourselves on the summit of a little rocky precipice,
and at its foot, lo! in full bloom, a splendid variety of the orchis,
(a flower I had never seen before,) looking to my astonished eyes like
an enchanted princess in a fairy tale. With a scream of joy we both
sprang for the prize. Harriet seized it first, but after gazing at it
a moment with a quiet smile, presented it to me. "Kings may be blest,
but I was glorious!" I never felt so rich before or since.
But there was one flower,--and I must confess that I made acquaintance
with it in a garden, but at an age when I thought all things grew out
of the blessed earth of their own sweet will,--which, as it is the
first I remember to have loved, has maintained the right of priority
in my affections to this day.
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