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Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK Men and women who had conservatories of their own, full of rare plants and costly orchids, came together to admire the gathered blossoms of the woodlands and meadows. But the people who had the best of the entertainment were the boys and girls who wandered through the thickets and down the brooks, pushed their way into the tangled copses and crept venturesomely across the swamps, to look for the flowers. Some of the seekers may have had a few gray hairs; but for that day at least they were all boys and girls. Nature was as young as ever, and they were all her children. Hand touched hand without a glove. The hidden blossoms of friendship unfolded. Laughter and merry shouts and snatches of half-forgotten song rose to the lips. Gay adventure sparkled in the air. School was out and nobody listened for the bell. It was just a day to live, and be natural, and take no thought for the morrow. There is great luck in this affair of looking for flowers. I do not see how any one who is prejudiced against games of chance can consistently undertake it. For my own part, I approve of garden flowers 96 A WILD STRAWBERRY because they arc so orderly and so certain; but wild flowers I love, just because there is so much chance about them. Nature is all in favour of certainty in great laws and of uncertainty in small events. You cannot appoint the day and the place for her flower-shows. If you happen to drop in at the right moment she will give you a free admission. But even then it seems as if the table of beauty had been spread for the joy of a higher visitor, and in obedience to secret orders which you have not heard. Have you ever found the fringed gentian? "JWJt before the :mows, There came a purple creature Thot lavished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, A rnl mockery was still. The frosts "!ere her cornliticm: The Tyrian would not come Umil the North evoked her,' Creator, sholl I bloom?'" There are strange freaks of fortune in the finding of wild flowers, and curious coincidences which 97 |
