st of all Ohio wild flowers,
called by the country people, 'Dutchman's breeches,' but in more refined
parlance, denominated 'pantalettes,' looking for all the world as if the
fairies had just done a day's washing and hung out their sweet little
nether garments to dry, suspended in rows from the tiny rods that so
gracefully bend beneath the pretty burden. Pure white are they, or of
such a delicate flesh-tint, the fairy washerwoman might well be proud of
her work. Other spots were sacred to the yellow lily, with its singular,
fierce-looking leaf, spotted like a panther's hide, growing in solitary
couples, protecting between them the slender stalk with its drooping
yellow bell. Later in the season come the larger and more brilliantly
tinted flowers, the wild purple larkspur, the great yellow buttercup,
and the lilac flox. There were dusky depths in the wood, too, into
which, book in hand, we sometimes retreated from the mid-summer heat
into an atmosphere of moist and murky coolness. There we found the
Indian pipe, or ghost-flower--leaf, stem, and flower, all white as wax,
turning to coal-black if long brought into light, or if pressed between
the leaves of a book.

This first little wood, then, though somewhat dark and damp, had its
pleasant and cheerful associations; but the wood beyond was weird and
dismal, with its dense shade, its fallen trees rotting in dark gullies,
its depth of decaying leaves, into which your feet sank down and down,
until in alarm you doubted whether there were really any footing
beneath, or if it would be possible ever to extricate yourself again.
These two woods touched only at one point, included in an angle between
a little burying-ground, whose solemn associations increased the gloom
of the farther wood. As children, we had been wont, in adventurous
moods, to cross one corner of the burying-ground, and striking into a
ravine within this wood, down which trickled a little dark stream, wade
up it barefoot, with grave, half-awe-stricken faces, until the stream
sank again beneath the dead leaves, emptying itself I know not where. We
had given wild and fantastic names to some of the ways and places about
this ravine, but the rest of the wood was so little attractive and
enjoyable that we generally avoided it, unless in some ramble of unusual
length, we wished to strike across one portion of it, making thereby a
somewhat shorter cut into the turnpike road a mile or two beyond.

As I stood this hot