Page:Letters of Life.djvu/38

26 approaching the grave age of forty when he welcomed his only child. One of my first recollections is of hiding my face in his bosom, and of how bright were the knitting-needles of his aged mother, who sat near with a loving smile

I was very happy in the gardens, when old enough to wander there. No nurse at my heels watched and restrained me, or wondered what I was about when I talked long with the flowers. My fair mother tied on my little sun-bonnet and mittens, and welcomed and lulled me to rest when I came wearied into the house.

I remember with what wondering reverence I gazed at the tall purple lilacs and white snowballs; my own most familiar acquaintance among the flower-people being the violets and blue-bells and lupines in my allotted plat of ground. Great delight had I also in watching the growth of the ripening fruits, and admiring His goodness who deepened the color in the orb of the berry and the downy cheek of the peach, and changed hard, green pin-heads into the full, fragrant grape cluster. Frequent visits I made to the arbor, covered by the mantling vine, and, spreading on its benches large leaves of the lilac which I was permitted to gather, drew on them, with a pin, the forms of such objects as met my view or floated in my fancy. Those green surfaces, deeply indented by my simple graver with birds, or nests, or winged creatures having neither name nor symmetry, or exhibiting patterns for wrought