If the time does come in which we think as much of our beautiful mountains as the people of Europe do of the Alps, we shall then guard them with far more jealous care than we do today. In spite of the fact that the Alps are wet and cold and that no one thinks of sleeping out of doors there, yet the people of Europe love their mountains almost passionately.
Our mountains are much more attractive summer playgrounds than the Alps. We can wander at will over a far greater number of untrodden ways than Europeans can in the Alps. We can make our beds under the trees with rarely a thought of the weather. The air is always balmy and the skies are almost always blue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE WILD FLOWERS
How eagerly we have looked forward to the coming of spring, and now it is here! The sun is shining brighter and warmer each day. The birds are returning from their winter home in the South. The buds on the trees are swelling and, in the warm nooks, some of the wild flowers have already opened their delicate petals. Who will find the first spring beauty in the Eastern woods? Who will find the first of the purple trilliums that open their dark flowers in the shady groves, or the golden poppies on the warm hillsides of the West?
H. W. Fairbanks
The wild oxalis loves the moist, shady places.