I was returning home by the
fields. It was midsummer; the hay harvest
was over, and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season
of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers—red, white and pink
scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow
centres and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms;
tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch;
yellow, red and pink scabious; plantains with faintly scented
neatly-arranged purple, slightly pink-tinged blossoms; corn-flowers,
bright blue in the sunshine and while still young, but growing paler and
redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate
quickly-withering almond-scented dodder flowers. I gathered a large
nosegay of these different flowers, and was going home, when I noticed in a
ditch, in full blume, a beautiful thistle plant of the crimson kind,
which in our neighbourhood they call "Tarter," and carefully avoid when
mowing—or, if they do happen to cut it down, throw out from among the
grass for fear of pricking their hands. Thinking to pick this thistle
and put it in the centre of my nosegay, I climbed down into the ditch,
and, after driving away a velvety humble-bee that had penetrated deep
into one of the flowers and had there fallen sweetly asleep, I set to
work to pluck the flower. But this proved a very difficult task. Not
only did the stalk prick on every side—even though the hankerchief
I wrapped round my hand—but it was so tough that I had to struggle with
it for nearly five minutes, breaking the fibres one by one; and when I
had at last plucked it, the stalk was all frayed, and the flower itself
no longer seemed fresh and beautiful. Moreover, owing to its coarseness
and stiffness, it did not seem in place among the delicate blossoms of my
nosegay. I felt sorry to have vainly destroyed a flower that looked
beautiful in its proper place, and I threw it away.
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