e 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