oms were, after all, the dearest, because they were
so familiar. Very few of us lived upon carpeted floors, but soft green
grass stretched away from our door-steps, all golden with dandelions in
spring. Those dandelion fields were like another heaven dropped down
upon the earth, where our feet wandered at will among the stars. What
need had we of luxurious upholstery, when we could step out into such
splendor, from the humblest door?

The dandelions could tell us secrets, too. We blew the fuzz off their
gray beads, and made them answer our question, "Does my mother want me
to come home?" Or we sat down together in the velvety grass, and wove
chains for our necks and wrists of the dandelion-sterns, and "made
believe" we were brides, or queens, or empresses.

Then there was the white rock-saxifrage, that filled the crevices of
the ledges with soft, tufty bloom like lingering snow-drifts, our
May-flower, that brought us the first message of spring. There was an
elusive sweetness in its almost imperceptible breath, which one could
only get by smelling it in close bunches. Its companion was the tiny
four-cleft innocence-flower, that drifted pale sky-tints across the
chilly fields. Both came to us in crowds, and looked out with us, as
they do with the small girls and boys of to-day, from the windy crest
of Powder House Hill,--the one playground of my childhood which is left
to the children and the cows just as it was then. We loved these little
democratic blossoms, that gathered around us in mobs at our May Day
rejoicings. It is doubtful whether we should have loved the trailing
arbutus any better, had it strayed, as it never did, into our woods.

Violets and anemones played at hide-and-seek with us in shady places.
The gay columbine rooted herself among the bleak rocks, and laughed and
nodded in the face of the east wind, coquettishly wasting the show of
her finery on the frowning air. Bluebirds twittered over the dandelions
in spring. In midsummer, goldfinches warbled among the thistle-tops;
and, high above the bird-congregations, the song-sparrow sent forth her
clear, warm, penetrating trill,--sunshine translated into music.

We were not surfeited, in those days, with what is called pleasure; but
we grew up happy and healthy, learning unconsciously the useful lesson
of doing without. The birds and blossoms hardly won a gladder or more
wholesome life from the air of our homely New England than we did.

"Out of the stron