MY HERBARIUM.

Poor, dry, musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic herbs, or green tea, or mouldy books. Your forms are bent and flattened into every ugly and distorted shape. Your lovely colors are faded,—white changed to black, yellow to dirty white, gorgeous scarlet to brick color, purple to muddy brown. Poor things! Who drew you from your native woods and brooks, to press you flat, and dry your moisture up, and paste you down helplessly upon your backs, such mocking shadows of your former grace and beauty?

Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it! It was I. In my early years I searched the 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 every variety of unnatural position. I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately and graceful green ferns, and finding them all "cockled up," as the phrase went, when I got home. I believe I made some experiments on a horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful. How happy children are with any new possession! I thought there never was any thing quite equal to my new book. All the girls had them, with neat marbled covers, and white paper within, and each one was determined to make hers the best of the whole. When pasting day came, there was an intense excitement. We all daubed our little fingers to our heart's content, and our faces too, as to that. I remember perfectly the sensation of smiling, after the paste stiffened. We spattered our desks, and pasted the wrong side of the flowers, and stuck the leaves together, and got every thing a little one-sided, and, in short, became so worried and heated and vexed, that we did not hunt for any more flowers for a long time after the first pasting day.

In the mean while my ideas had undergone a change. I had become much more ambitious. A hew page brings flowers of a higher order, and, beneath them, besides the common name, appears a sounding botanical title; ay, still more, the class and order are written in full. Poor things! How many of your species must have been pulled to pieces by inexperienced hands, to ascertain the exact number of stamens, and their relative positions! I feel, now, a tenderness for the shrinking, delicate wild flowers, that makes me hesitate even to pick them from their shady retreats; but then, such was my ardor for investigation, the more I loved them, and the more beautiful they seemed, the more eagerly I tore them to fragments. Let the ingenious student analyze bits of brass wire, and reduce to its simple elements as much gunpowder as he pleases, but I raise my voice against this wanton destruction of rare and beautiful flowers. No chemical process can ever restore them.

As I glance over this new page, I see a merry troop of little girls, crowding around their kind teacher, trying to restrain their superabundant spirits, and restless activity, till they may give them free scope in the woods. Passing up the street, they are joined by fresh recruits, who come dancing out of the houses, with baskets, and trowels, and tin boxes, and delightfully mysterious suppers packed away nicely, to be eaten in the most romantic place that can be found,—provided there is no danger of snakes, or ivy. Where they are going I should find it impossible to say, until I have consulted the new leaf just turned over. Here, side by side, are the wild Columbine and the cheerful little Bethlehem Star. They grew, I remember, upon Powder-House Hill, so named from the massive granite building upon its summit, which we never dared to go near, for fear of an explosion. The hill was rough, rocky, barren, and in some places quite steep. In the clefts of the rocks, generally far above our reach, the bright red columbines stood in groups, drooping their graceful heads. Some of the rocks were worn to a perfect polish by the feet of daring sliders. It was a dangerous pastime even to the most experienced. A loss of balance, a slight deviation from the beaten track, a trip in a hollow, or a momentary entanglement in your dress,—and you are lost! I declined joining in the diversion ever after the first attempt, which was nothing but a headlong plunge from top to bottom. But though I heroically stood aloof while the girls were enjoying the sport, and making the air ring with their laughter, I was sure, afterwards, to come upon the slippery places unintentionally, and take a slide whether I would or not. I had, I remember, a most unfortunate propensity for climbing and scrambling, choosing the worst paths, and daring the others to follow my lead on precarious footholds. It was unfortunate, because I seldom came forth from these trials unscathed. I was always tearing my dresses in clambering over fences, or bumping my head in creeping under. Where others cleared brooks with a light spring, I landed in the middle. I was sure to pick out spongy, oozy, slippery grass to stand upon, in marshy land, or was yet more likely to slump through over shoes in black mud. Banks always caved in beneath my feet, unexpectedly. Brambles seemed to enter into a conspiracy to lay violent hands on me, and hidden boughs lay in wait to trip me up. Moss and bark scaled off the trunks of fallen trees, bearing me with it when I was least on my guard, or the trunks themselves, solid enough to all appearance, crushed to powder beneath my unwary tread. Even the stone walls deserted me. I made use of one as a bridge, one day, to reach a golden cowslip that grew temptingly in a swamp; but a treacherous stone rolled off with me, and a perfect avalanche of huge rocks followed, splashing the muddy water all over me as I sat, helplessly, buoyed up by the tall grass. I regret to say, I forgot the cowslip.