Fresh violets open every day;
To some new bird each hour we listen.
—Lucy Larcom.
THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE
What a wonderful world it is, this world of green fields and perfume and blossoms of pink and gold! Where did it come from? How did it get here out of the white winter? That bleak and barren winter that lay all around us everywhere only a few short weeks ago?
Just suppose we had never seen apple trees in bloom, as we are now seeing them everywhere, and somebody should show us a little brown seed, and a piece of bark, and a piece of root, and a green leaf, and a blossom, and an apple, and tell us they grew out of each other—were all made of the very same stuff.
Well, just as sure as anything, you wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. We simply couldn't! But we've had this sort of thing all around us ever since we can remember, and we've got so used to it we don't see anything wonderful about it. It is wonderful just the same. The Colossus of Rhodes, and Jupiter of Olympia, and the lighthouse of Alexandria, and all the other Seven Wonders of the World that people used to go so far to see, weren't anything to it.
And to this day, how it all comes about is as much of a mystery as ever. Yet Nature does it right before our eyes, and over and over and over again! Even I, old as I am, and as much as I know, I don't know how she does it, but I do know how it all started; how Nature first began to change one thing into another. It was when she began making marbles, granites, and other kinds of rock out of other kinds. That was ages before she changed little brown seeds into big trees with pink blossoms and red apples on them, or little brown cocoons into big golden butterflies, or anything like that.
I. In the Fairyland of Change
Ahem! Ahem! (Pebble coughing.)