It is, then, upon all and sundry that I urge the claims of the Alps from the middle of May to mid-July; it is to the merest tyro in plant-lore, as well as to the botanical and gardening enthusiast, that I say, and say in all persuasiveness of conviction: “You know not what you miss by failing
‘To catch the master-note of Nature’s lyre’;
you know not what you lose by neglecting the call of the flowers from off these Alpine fields.”
Go where you will—Champex alone is not the Alpine throne of Flora; she reigns superbly to right and left, from Neuchatel to Valais, from Tessin to Geneva—go where you will amid the Alps and you will find fields that shall enchant you, rejuvenating your spirit and causing the “knapsack of custom,” full of “city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish,” to slip from your back. The plains of the world are the better for the mountains of the world, and in no respect more so than when the mountains are a-flower.
CHAPTER X
THE AUTUMN CROCUS
“Tu viens, Automne,