As much even as the wild flowers themselves were the children a feature in the seemingly interminable panorama, that flitted past me in my long tour in the Wanderer. The wild flowers were everywhere; by wayside, on hillside, by streamlet, in copse, hiding in fairy nooks among the brackens in the woodlands, carpeting mossy banks in the pine forests, floating on the lakes, nodding to the running brooklets, creeping over ruined walls and fences, and starring the hedgerows,—wild flowers, wild flowers everywhere.
Wild flowers everywhere, and children everywhere.
Country children: minding cows or sheep or pigs; trotting Blondin-like along the parapets of high bridges; riding or swinging on gateways; stringing daisies on flowery meads; paddling in stream or in burn; fishing by lonely tarns; swinging in the tree-tops; or boring head first through hedges of blackthorn and furze.
Village children: sitting in dozens on door-steps; a-squat on the footpath, nursing babies as big as themselves; at play on the walks or in the street midst; toddling solemnly off to school, with well-washed faces, and book-laden; or rushing merrily home again, with faces all begrimed with mud and tears.
Seaside children: out in boats, rocked in the cradle of the deep; bathing in dozens, swimming, sprawling, splashing, whooping; squatting among the seaweed; dabbling in pools, or clinging to the cliffs with all the tenacity of crabs.
Children everywhere, all along. Curly-pated children, bare-legged children, well-dressed children, and children in rags, but all shouting, screaming, laughing, smiling, or singing, and all as happy, seemingly, as the summer’s day was long.
“Harmless, happy little treasures,
Full of truth, and trust, and mirth;
Richest wealth and purest pleasures
In this mean and guilty earth.
“But yours is the sunny dimple,
Radiant with untutored smiles;
Yours the heart, sincere and simple,
Innocent of selfish wiles.
“Yours the natural curling tresses,
Prattling tongues and shyness coy;
Tottering steps and kind caresses,
Pure with health, and warm with joy.”
Look at that little innocent yonder in that cottage doorway. There is a well-kept garden in front of the house, but not a flower in it more sweet than she. Round-faced, curly-tressed, dimpled chin and cheeks and knee. It is early morning, she has rushed to the door in her little night-dress; one stocking is on, the other she waves wildly aloft as she cheers the Wanderer.
Here at a village door is a group—a bouquet you may say—worth looking it. Three such pretty children, seated in a doorway, on the steps. They are dressed in blue, with white socks and fairy-like caps, and the oldest is holding a bald-headed crowing baby in her lap.
Here is another tableau: three pretty little well-dressed maidens, hand-in-hand, dancing and whirling in Indian circle round a hole which has been dug in the green sward; a fourth seated close by the hole, flicking the dust up in clouds with a green bough, and giving each a full share of it. Never mind the lace-edged dresses, heed not the snow-white pinafores, round and round and round they go, and how they laugh and shout, and enjoy it!