sea-urchin, that looked as if
he was made only for ornament, when he had once got rid of his spines,
and the transparent jelly-fish, that seemed to have no more right to be
alive than a ladleful of mucilage,--and the razor-shells, and the
barnacles, and the knotted kelp, and the flabby green
sea-aprons,--there was no end to the interesting things I found when I
was trusted to go down to the edge of the tide alone.

The tide itself was the greatest marvel, slipping away so noiselessly,
and creeping back so softly over the flats, whispering as it reached
the sands, and laughing aloud "I am coming!" as, dashing against the
rocks, it drove me back to where the sea-lovage and purple beach-peas
had dared to root themselves. I listened, and felt through all my
little being that great, surging word of power, but had no guess of its
meaning. I can think of it now as the eternal voice of Law, ever
returning to the green, blossoming, beautiful verge of Gospel truth, to
confirm its later revelation, and to say that Law and Gospel belong
together. "The sea is His, and He made it: and His hands formed the dry
land."

And the dry land, the very dust of the earth, every day revealed to me
some new miracle of a flower. Coming home from school one warm noon, I
chanced to look down, and saw for the first time the dry roadside all
starred with lavender-tinted flowers, scarcely larger than a pin-head;
fairy-flowers, indeed; prettier than anything that grew in gardens. It
was the red sand-wort; but why a purple flower should be called red, I
do not know. I remember holding these little amethystine blossoms like
jewels in the palm of my hand, and wondering whether people who walked
along that road knew what beautiful things they were treading upon. I
never found the flower open except at noonday, when the sun was
hottest. The rest of the time it was nothing but an insignificant,
dusty-leaved weed,--a weed that was transformed into a flower only for
an hour or two every day. It seemed like magic.

The busy people at home could tell me very little about the wild
flowers, and when I found a new one I thought I was its discoverer. I
can see myself now leaning in ecstasy over a small, rough-leaved purple
aster in a lonely spot on the hill, and thinking that nobody else in
all the world had ever beheld such a flower before, because I never
had. I did not know then, that the flower-generations are older than
the human race.

The commonest bloss