Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's JournalPutnam, Mary Lowell
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Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal
Putnam, Mary Lowell
Diary fiction; Slavery -- United States -- Fiction
This talk of New-England wild-flowers, the mention of names once so
familiar, was very pleasant to me. I must have the blood-root, if it
will grow here. I could never see it again without seeing in it a
great deal more than itself. For me, the pure white of the flower will
symbolize the wisdom of God, always manifest; the red of the root, His
love, sometimes latent, yet still there.
The Doctor, having made his protest, put the microscope into its case,
and came to my mother's table to examine. When he spied the little
flowers nestled in the green, he exclaimed,--
"Where did you find these, Harry? You must have gone far for them."
"No; I found them where the old forest used to be, among the stumps."
"Waiting for a new generation of protectors to grow up about them,"
said the Doctor, looking at them kindly; "this generous climate
leaves nothing long despoiled. If Nature is let alone, she will soon
have a forest there again. But, Harry, you must take me to that spot.
We'll see what else there is to find."
"Are these flowers scarce?" Harry asked.
"They are getting to be."
"I should have shown them to you, but they are so pretty I thought
they must be common."
"Well, to do you justice, you don't often make a mistake now.--When we
first set out," continued the Doctor, turning to me, "he was always
asking me to see this beautiful flower or that superb tree; but now he
never calls my attention to anything that is not worth looking at."
"I called you to see one superb tree that you found worth looking at,"
said Harry,--"Brompton's oak at Omocqua. Colvil, when you see that
tree!"
Love of trees is one of the things that Harry and I are alike in.
"Yes, that is one of the finest specimens of the live-oak I have met
with," affirmed the Doctor.
"We will hold our meeting under it on the nineteenth," said Harry.
"Colvil, come on the afternoon of the eighteenth. Be there before
sunset."
"Harry will bespeak fine weather," said the Doctor.
"You know how Omocqua stands?" asked Harry. "It is in a plain, but a
high plain."
"I have heard that it is a beautiful place."
"It is beautiful from a distance," said the Doctor; "and when you are
in it, the distant views are beautiful. The hotel we were at,--the
Jefferson Hotel, Harry?"
"The Jackson, I believe, Doctor."
"No, the Jefferson," decided the Doctor, after a moment's thought. "We
heard the two hotels discussed at Cyclops, and decided for the
oldest."
"They are opposite each other on Union Square," said Harry, waiving
the question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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