MINE OWN COUNTRY
of the seasons. It grows, it blooms, it withers; and withering, it spreads of its petals a rug under the feet of remeniscence. It paints the horizon of the soul a sullen gold,—it fills its resting places with an entrancing perfume. The child-soul is a nursery which afterward often becomes a deserted garden in which we love to stroll. It is a cathedral in which are buried the cherubs of our fancy and the heroes of our dreams.—The cyclamen is going to be my intercessor at the altar of my local Saint. As I draw it gently out of its nich in the rock, to preserve its diapered leaf and every inch of its delicate russet stem, I impart to it a life separate from its own, which I cherish in my dream-moments more than any worldly dream. And our mother's nurseries, how we would rancask them to make a child's holiday! Those same flowers and odoriferous plants that we destroyed in infant rapture, still grow and bloom perennially to diffuse around them such joy and faith in life as mortal man, in his recurring doubts, peren-
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