Part 6 (1/2)

Peter Paul kissed the tears tenderly from her cheeks.

”Perhaps I shall when I am older, and have shaken off a few more of my whims into the sea. I'll come back yet, Leena, and live very near to you, and grow tulips, and be as good an old bachelor-uncle to your boy as Uncle Jacob is to me.”

When they got to the hillock where Mother used to sit, Peter Paul took her once more into his arms.

”Good-bye, good sister,” he said, ”I have been back in my childhood again, and G.o.d knows that is both pleasant and good for one.”

”And it is funny that you should say so,” said Leena, smiling through her tears; ”for when we were children you were never happy except in thinking of when you should be a man.”

And with this salutary home-thrust (which thoroughly commonplace minds have such a provoking faculty for giving) Leena went back to her children and cattle.

Happy for the artistic temperament that can profit by such rebuffs!

PART III.

Yet, how few believe such doctrine springs From a poor root, Which all the winter sleeps here under foot, And hath no wings To raise it to the truth and light of things; But is stil trod By ev'ry wand'ring clod.

O Thou, Whose Spirit did at first inflame And warm the dead, And by a sacred incubation fed With life this frame, Which once had neither being, forme, nor name, Grant I may so Thy steps track here below,

That in these masques and shadows I may see Thy sacred way; And by those hid ascents climb to that day Which breaks from Thee, Who art in all things, though invisibly, ”_The Hidden Flower_.”

HENRY VAUGHAN.

One of the causes which helped to develop my sister's interest in flowers was the sight of the fresh ones that she met with on going to live in New Brunswick after her marriage. Every strange face was a subject for study, and she soon began to devote a note-book to sketches of these new friends, naming them scientifically from Professor Asa Gray's _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States_, whilst Major Ewing added as many of the Melicete names as he could glean from Peter, a member of the tribe, who had attached himself to the Ewings, and used constantly to come about their house.

Peter and his wife lived in a small colony of the Melicete Indians, which was established on the opposite side of the St. John River to that on which the Reka Dom stood. Mrs. Peter was the most skilful embroiderer in beads amongst her people, and Peter himself the best canoe-builder. He made a beautiful one for the Ewings, which they constantly used; and when they returned to England his regret at losing them was wonderfully mitigated by the present which Major Ewing gave him of an old gun; he declared no gentleman had ever thought of giving him such a thing before!

Julie introduced several of the North American flowers into her stories. The Tabby-striped Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in ”We and the World,” where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he ”can speak with other tongues,” from his ability to converse with a squaw in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and was holding in his hand.

[Footnote 30: _Child Life._ Edited by J.G. Whittier. Nesbitt and Co.]

This allusion was only a slight one, but Julie wrote a complete story on one species of Trillium, having a special affection for the whole genus. Trilliums are amongst the North American herbaceous plants which have lately become fas.h.i.+onable, and easy to be bought in England; but ere they did so, Julie made some ineffectual attempts to transplant tubers of them into English soil; and the last letter she received from Fredericton contained a packet of red Trillium seeds, which came too late to be sown before she died. The species which she immortalized in ”The Blind Hermit and the Trinity Flower,” was _T.

erythrocarpum_. The story is a graceful legend of an old Hermit whose life was spent in growing herbs for the healing of diseases; and when he, in his turn, was struck with blindness, he could not reconcile himself to the loss of the occupation which alone seemed to make him of use in the world. ”They also serve who only stand and wait” was a hard lesson to learn; every day he prayed for some Balm of Gilead to heal his ill, and restore his sight, and the prayer was answered, though not in the manner that he desired. First he was supplied with a serving-boy, who became eyes and feet to him, from grat.i.tude for cures which the Hermit had done to the lad himself; and then a vision was granted to the old man, wherein he saw a flower which would heal his blindness:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRILLIUM ERYTHROCARPUM.]

”And what was the Trinity Flower like, my Father?” asked the boy.

”It was about the size of Herb Paris, my son,” replied the Hermit.

”But, instead of being fourfold every way, it numbered the mystic Three. Every part was threefold. The leaves were three, the petals three, the sepals three. The flower was snow-white, but on each of the three parts it was stained with crimson stripes, like white garments dyed in blood.”

A root of this plant was sent to the Hermit by a heavenly messenger, which the boy planted, and anxiously watched the growth of, cheering his master with the hope--”Patience, my Father, thou shalt see yet!”

Meantime greater light was breaking in upon the Hermit's soul than had been there before:

”My son, I repent me that I have not been patient under affliction.

Moreover, I have set thee an ill example, in that I have murmured at that which G.o.d--Who knoweth best--ordained for me.”