I loved Nature as I knew her,--in our
stern, blustering, stimulating New England,--and I chanted the
praises of Winter, of snow-storms, and of March winds (I always
took pride in my birth month, March), with hearty delight.
Flowers had begun to bring me messages from their own world when
I was a very small child, and they never withdrew their
companionship from my thoughts, for there came summers when I
could only look out of the mill window and dream about them.
I had one pet window plant of my own, a red rosebush, almost a
perpetual bloomer, that I kept beside me at my work for years. I
parted with it only when I went away to the West, and then with
regret, for it had been to me like a human little friend. But the
wild flowers had my heart. I lived and breathed with them, out
under the free winds of heaven; and when I could not see them, I
wrote about them. Much that I contributed to those mill-magazine
pages, they suggested,--my mute teachers, comforters, and
inspirers. It seems to me that any one who does not care for wild
flowers misses half the sweetness of this mortal life.
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