Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it! It was I. In my early years I searched the woods and meadows, scaled rocks, forded bogs, and scrutinized each shady thicket, with murderous intent. I bore my drooping victims home, and sacrificed them relentlessly to science. With my own hand I turned the screw that crushed out all that was lovely and graceful and delicate about them. How I wearied myself over that flower-press! How anxiously I watched over the stiff stalks and shrivelled leaves,—all that was left! How perseveringly I changed and dried the papers, jammed my fingers between the heavy boards, and blistered my hands with that obstinate screw! And how cordially I hated it all! I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a stern sense of duty. Now, thanks to the busy little fingers that passed over these leaves, I have a fund of amusement laid up for me; for every page has its story, and each mutilated flower is the centre of a beautiful picture. Here the ludicrous and the pathetic are so exquisitely blended, that I laugh with a regretful feeling at my heart, and sigh even when smiles are on my face. The first few pages are light and joyous, full of a child's warm impulses and ready zeal, and enlivened here and there by some roguish caprice. That was the time when, in my simplicity, I loved dandelions and buttercups, and could see beauty even in the common white-weed of the fields. Ah! here they are, arranged in whimsical positions,—Clover and Sorrel, Violets and Blue-eyed Grass, Peppergrass and Dock (O, how hard that was to press!), Mouse-Ear and Yarrow, Shepherd's Purse, Buttercups, and full-blown Dandelion, Succory, and Chickweed, and Gill-run-over-the-ground,—with their homeliest names written in sprawling characters, all down hill, beneath them. I did not aspire to botanical names in those days. I thought nothing was unfit for my new Herbarium. Such was my zeal, that I believe I should have filled it entirely in a few days, if I had not been counselled to make a judicious selection. I had a faculty for bringing home plants impossible to press, and insisting upon making the experiment. I slept for a week with my bed-post tilted up on a huge book, wherein reposed a water-lily, obstinately refusing to lie flat. All kinds of woody plants, too, were my delight, though they invariably came out of the press as they went in, except that the leaves were in every variety of unnatural position. I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately and graceful green ferns, and finding them all "cockled up," as the phrase went, when I got home. I believe I made some experiments on a horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful. How happy children are with any new possession! I thought there never was any thing quite equal to my new book. All the girls had them, with neat marbled covers, and white paper within, and each one was determined to make hers the best of the whole. When pasting day came, there was an intense excitement. We all daubed our little fingers to our heart's content, and our faces too, as to that. I remember perfectly the sensation of smiling, after the paste stiffened. We spattered our desks, and pasted the wrong side of the flowers, and stuck the leaves together, and got every thing a little one-sided, and, in short, became so worried and heated and vexed, that we did not hunt for any more flowers for a long time after the first pasting day.
In the mean while my ideas had undergone a change. I had become much more ambitious. A hew page brings flowers of a higher order, and, beneath them, besides the common name, appears a sounding botanical title; ay, still more, the class and order are written in full. Poor things! How many of your species must have been pulled to pieces by inexperienced hands, to ascertain the exact number of stamens, and their relative positions! I feel, now, a tenderness for the shrinking, delicate wild flowers, that makes me hesitate even to pick them from their shady retreats; but then, such was my ardor for investigation, the more I loved them, and the more beautiful they seemed, the more eagerly I tore them to fragments. Let the ingenious student analyze bits of brass wire, and reduce to its simple elements as much gunpowder as he pleases, but I raise my voice against this wanton destruction of rare and beautiful flowers. No chemical process can ever restore them.
As I glance over this new page, I see a merry troop of little girls, crowding around their kind teacher, trying to restrain their superabundant spirits, and restless activity, till they may give them free scope in the woods. Passing up the street, they are joined by fresh recruits, who come dancing out of the houses, with baskets, and trowels, and tin boxes, and delightfully mysterious suppers packed away nicely, to be eaten in the most romantic place that can be found,—provided there is no danger of snakes, or ivy. Where they are going I should find it impossible to say, until I have consulted the new leaf just turned over. Here, side by side, are the wild Columbine and the cheerful little Bethlehem Star. They grew, I remember, upon Powder-House Hill, so named from the massive granite building upon its summit, which we never dared to go near, for fear of an explosion. The hill was rough, rocky, barren, and in some places quite steep. In the clefts of the rocks, generally far above our reach, the bright red columbines stood in groups, drooping their graceful heads. Some of the rocks were worn to a perfect polish by the feet of daring sliders. It was a dangerous pastime even to the most experienced. A loss of balance, a slight deviation from the beaten track, a trip in a hollow, or a momentary entanglement in your dress,—and you are lost! I declined joining in the diversion ever after the first attempt, which was nothing but a headlong plunge from top to bottom. But though I heroically stood aloof while the girls were enjoying the sport, and making the air ring with their laughter, I was sure, afterwards, to come upon the slippery places unintentionally, and take a slide whether I would or not. I had, I remember, a most unfortunate propensity for climbing and scrambling, choosing the worst paths, and daring the others to follow my lead on precarious footholds. It was unfortunate, because I seldom came forth from these trials unscathed. I was always tearing my dresses in clambering over fences, or bumping my head in creeping under. Where others cleared brooks with a light spring, I landed in the middle. I was sure to pick out spongy, oozy, slippery grass to stand upon, in marshy land, or was yet more likely to slump through over shoes in black mud. Banks always caved in beneath my feet, unexpectedly. Brambles seemed to enter into a conspiracy to lay violent hands on me, and hidden boughs lay in wait to trip me up. Moss and bark scaled off the trunks of fallen trees, bearing me with it when I was least on my guard, or the trunks themselves, solid enough to all appearance, crushed to powder beneath my unwary tread. Even the stone walls deserted me. I made use of one as a bridge, one day, to reach a golden cowslip that grew temptingly in a swamp; but a treacherous stone rolled off with me, and a perfect avalanche of huge rocks followed, splashing the muddy water all over me as I sat, helplessly, buoyed up by the tall grass. I regret to say, I forgot the cowslip.
[THE OSTRICH.]
Of the wild and wayward Ostrich, say, have ye never heard?
Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird?
Which is not a bird of heaven, nor yet a beast of earth,
But ever roveth, homeless,—a creature of strange birth.
Wings hath it, but it flies not. And yet within its breast
Are strange and sleepless drivings, so that it may not rest;
Half-formed, half-conscious impulses, with its half-formed pinions given,
Too strong for rest on earth, too weak to bear to heaven;—
And madly it beats its wings, but vainly, against its side,
For the light wind rusheth through them, mocking them in its pride.
Then, distraught, it hurries onward, the gates of heaven shut,
Flying from what it knows not,—seeking it knows not what.
While in the parching desert, amid the stones and sand,
Its stone-like eggs are lying, here and there, on every hand,
It wanders on, unheeding; and, with funereal gloom,
Trembles in every breeze each torn, dishevelled plume.
And when, with startled terror, it sees its foes around,
It strives to rise above them, but clingeth to the ground.
Then on it madly rusheth, with idly fluttering wings;
The stones in showers behind it convulsively it flings;
Onward, and ever onward,—the fleetest horses tire,—
But its strength grows less and less, their tramping ever nigher.
The poor distracted thing! it feels its lonely birth;
It may not rise to heaven, so it cometh to the earth;
To the earth, as to a mother, since to the earth it must,—
Its head in her bosom nestled, its eye veiled with her dust.
But she will not receive it. From earth and heaven outcast,
The Ostrich dies, as it lived, unfriended to the last.
Of the wild and wayward Ostrich, say, have ye never heard?
Of the poor, distracted, lonely, outcast, and wandering bird?
But not alone it wandereth. My spirit stirs in me,
With a sort of half-fraternal and drawing sympathy;
This lonely, restless spirit, that would rise from the heavy ground
To the sky of light and love that stretcheth all around.
But, with all its restless longings, it too must earth-bound stay,
And, with wings half formed for soaring, here hold its weary way,
Hungering for food of heaven, feeding on dust and stone,
While about it lie unheeded, as it hasteth on alone,
Its deeds of good or evil, a fruitful mystery;
But it presseth on, nor recketh what their event may be.
And when doubt and fear assail it, it may not rise above
To the glorious, peaceful height of fear-outcasting love;
But something draws it downward, breathes of its lower birth,
Prompts it to seek a refuge in the blindness of the earth.
And it hides its head in earthliness; at least it will not see
The blow it cannot ward off; and the foe it may not flee.
But something softly whispers that these wings shall grow to soar—
Heaven grant!—in the cloudless depths of love for evermore.
It whispers that again these blinded eyes shall see;
Heaven grant in their yearning gaze the long-sought home may be!
It whispers each word and act shall to fruition spring;
Heaven grant they may joy to man, and peace to the spirit bring!
Of the wild and wandering Ostrich, say, have ye never heard?
The type of the restless soul of man, the weary, wingless bird.