Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life

								

cow-lilies rose sturdily triumphant, dripping with color, glowing in
sheen. The button-bush hung out her balls, and white alder painted the
air with faint perfume; willow-herb built her bowery arches, and the
flags were ever glancing like swords of roistering knights. These
flags, be it known to such as have grown up in grievous ignorance of
the lore inseparable from "deestrick school," hold the most practical
significance in the mind of boy and girl; for they bring forth (I know
we thought for our delight alone!) a delicacy known as flag-buds,
everlastingly dear to the childish palate. These were devoured by the
wholesale in their season, and little mouths grew oozy-green as those
of happy beasties in June, from much champing and chewing. Did we lose
our appetite for the delectable dinner-pail through such literal going
to pasture? I think not. Tastes were elastic, in those days; and
Nature, so bullied, durst seldom revolt.
On one side, the nearest neighbor to the school lived at least a mile
away; but on the other, the first house of all owned treasures manifold
for the little squad who, though the day were wet or dry, fair or
frowning, trotted thither at noon. Here were trees under which lay, in
happy season, over-ripe Bartlett pears; here, too, was one
mulberry-tree, whereof the suggestion was strange and wonderful, and
the fruit less appealing to taste than to a mystical fancy. But outside
the bank wall grew the balm-of-Gileads, in a stately, benevolent
row,--trees of healing, of fragrance and romantic charm. No child ever
sought the old home to beg pears and mulberries, or to fill the
school-house pail at its dark-bosomed well, without bearing away a few
of the leaves in a covetous grasp. Sweet treasure-trove these, to be
pressed to fresh young faces, and held and patted in hot little palms,
till they grew flabby but evermore fragrant, still diffusing over the
dusty schoolroom that warm odor, whispering to those who read no corner
but their own New England, of the myrrh and balsams of the East.
We knew everything in those days, we aimless knights-errant with
dinner-pail and slate; the dry, frosty hollow where gentians bloom when
the pride of the field is over, the woody slopes of the hepatica's
awakening, under coverlet of withered leaves, and the sunny banks where
violets love to live with their good gossip, the trembling anemone. At
noon, we roved abroad into solitudes so deep that even our unsuspecting
hearts sometimes quaked with fear of dark and lonesomeness; and then we
came trooping back at the sound of the bell, untamed, happy little
savages, ready to settle, with a long breath, to the afternoon's drowsy
routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of British America and the
conjugation of the verb to be! Who that might loll away the hours
upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of computation or the
tongues? He alone had inherited the earth.
All the little figures flitting through those tranquil early dramas are