One day at noon, I strolled to the door, seeking a breath of air. I stood within the doorway, and looked out. Before me extended a level tract of green grass, thinly planted with young shade-trees. At some distance beyond, melting away in haze beneath the glowing sun, a little wood extended toward the north-east, meeting at its extremity another and denser wood of much greater extent. This first little wood had been in our young days our favorite resort. We had explored every turn in it again and again; we knew well every tree upon its outskirts, beneath whose shade some little patch of green grass might serve for a resting-place, or a pic-nic ground; we were familiar with every old trunk with wide-extending roots, in whose protecting cavities that little, speckled, pepper-and-salt-looking flower, the spring harbinger, nestled, peeping forth toward the end of March, ere the ice and snow had well melted, or any other green thing dared show itself. Deeper in the shade lay the soft beds of decaying leaves, where somewhat later the spring beauties would start forth, clothing the brown and purple tints of the ground with touches of delicate pink. With them would come that fair little wind-flower, the white anemone, and the blue and yellow violets, soon to be followed by that loveliest of all Ohio wild flowers, called by the country people, 'Dutchman's breeches,' but in more refined parlance, denominated 'pantalettes,' looking for all the world as if the fairies had just done a day's washing and hung out their sweet little nether garments to dry, suspended in rows from the tiny rods that so gracefully bend beneath the pretty burden. Pure white are they, or of such a delicate flesh-tint, the fairy washerwoman might well be proud of her work. Other spots were sacred to the yellow lily, with its singular, fierce-looking leaf, spotted like a panther's hide, growing in solitary couples, protecting between them the slender stalk with its drooping yellow bell. Later in the season come the larger and more brilliantly tinted flowers, the wild purple larkspur, the great yellow buttercup, and the lilac flox. There were dusky depths in the wood, too, into which, book in hand, we sometimes retreated from the mid-summer heat into an atmosphere of moist and murky coolness. There we found the Indian pipe, or ghost-flower--leaf, stem, and flower, all white as wax, turning to coal-black if long brought into light, or if pressed between the leaves of a book.