For the Ladies' Casket. RURAL PLEASURES. BY MISS H. WOODMAN. [See Plate.] WREATHE thou a garland for twilight's still hour; Softly and brightly shine, Painted by Him of the limitless powers! Dance on the green-sward at morning and eve; Far from your bosoms life's dark shadows leave; Shout on the Summer air, Welcome the perfume there, Who can now murmur who can now grieve! Joy is above us, around and below; Over our heads see the skies' ruddy glow; Grass, like soft velvet, lies Where'er we turn our eyes, Birds, those "winged jewels," sing as they go! Walk through the forest and sit by the stream Sometimes to worship and sometimes to dream; There cast your eyes around, No spot is lonely found, All with fresh life and the beautiful teem! Make thy young spirit a garden all fair; Choice be thy blossoms which time opens there; LIFE OF A FLOWER, IN LETTERS FROM A VIOLET TO A LADY. LETTER I. "MY DEAR MADAM "Do not ask me by write its own history. what means a flower has contrived to How in the course of my short life,one week, five days, nine hours and twenty-three minutes, at this moment, I learned so much of men and things, as to qualify me to tell you my little tale in language intelligible to beings so exalted in the scale of creation as you are, you will hear in the sequel. I can assure you, on the word of one among the innumerable millions of a race by whom a lie was never told since Adam plucked the first flower in Paradise,— and that, you know, was before he was married, that every syllable of the following record is as true as that I myself ever lived. Who has lent me his pen, as amanuensis on this occasion, I shall not tell; for if you are not sufficiently well acquainted with the hand-writing at once to recognise it as that of a friend, he has deceived me, or you have deceived him. I have only to premise further, that if there be any thing in my narrative unworthy of a violet, or what a violet could not have known, spoken, or done, you will be pleased to attribute it to his ignorant or impertinent interpolation. I do not recollect being born, nor do I remember my parents; for we violets, being only spring-flowers, die nine months before our children come into the world. But this is idle prating; for, to tell the truth, there are no such things as fathers and mothers among us; we love ourselves, and our posterity are the offspring of self-love; consequently, there can be no fear of our own issue failing, while this rulling passion is the universal inheritance of all our tribe. The first event that I can call to mind was, the fall of an icicle from the old oak tree under which I grew, upon my head, when it was no bigger than a pin's. The pain of this uncouth accident was to me the earliest consciousness of existence; I was then, according to the best chronology, exactly eight and forty hours old, by the church clock of our parish, which struck six, A. M., just as the icicle was shaken from a branch above, by the sudden rising on the wing of a crow, that had roosted on it all night, and who, having overslept himself, was startled out of a pleasant dream, by the report of a gun, which farmer Gripe's son fired at him over the adjacent hedge. As the poor bird lost nothing but the remainder of his nap, and his tail, which was shot sheer away, he will not be any worse, or wiser either, for the misadventure; -the feathers will grow again, no doubt; and so far from profitting by the warning, I saw him sitting on the very same bough, the day before yesterday, and cawing as if he were king of the region. This happened on the third of May; I therefore conclude that I must have been born on the first, as good a day as can be found in the whole calendar, for the coming forth of a flower. From the instant that sense and reason were thus awakened in me, I became a quick and diligent observer of all that passed within me and around, so far as opportunities were afforded for gratifying my curiosity and improving my mind. The authentic particulars respecting the crow and the icicle above mentioned, I was told, while yet smarting under the pain of the accident, by my neighbor and gossip, a withered sprig of spear-grass, which had already outlived two winters, and was notoriously the greatest gossip that grew for ten fields round. By this merry blade I was taught the rudiments of useful knowledge; and whether you believe me or not, I will venture to affirm that my preceptress was as good a schoolmistress as any old woman of eighty within the ring of our bells, and myself as good a scholar, at the week's end, as any little boy or girl three hundred times my age, and ten thousand times my bulk. During my minority, that is, till my blossom opened, I was blind; and in truth I had then only two of the five senses by which you animals vainly imagine that you are distinguished above us vegetables: but let me tell you, that I could feel as exquisitely as yourself, Madam. Indeed I doubt whether an icicle a quarter of an inch long, falling upon your head, would have cost you half the anguish, that such an infliction cost me. And as for hearing, certainly you will not pretend to measure your ears with mine: I dare say you never heard a stalk of grass speak in your life; I have heard one uttering oracles all day long, aye, and all night, too; for my neighbor talked as much in her sleep, and as much to the purpose, as when she was awake. - Now, while I was blind, I had nothing to do but to grow wiser and bigger every day;-bigger I did grow, for I could not help it, and wiser, but I must not boast, lest I should prove myself a fool: I may say, however, that I do not recollect that I ever lost a moment in all my schooling, with the old beldame of our bank-side, or under a much higher and more accomplished tutor, at whose feet I was brought up, and by whom I was as carefully instructed, as if, instead of a few spring days, my life was to equal your grandmother's. This august and venerable personage was no other than a majestic oak, that had outlasted twenty generations of your long-lived race, and five hundred of ours; nay, it had stood so long against the strokes of time and death, that it had survived two-thirds of itself, being only a ruin, yet, even in decay, more magnificent than a forest of brambles in their glory. This oak, which was, or pretended to be, for I could not help suspecting some unacknowledged gaps in the avenue of his genealogy, my honored tutor having only one weak point about him, and that was a certain pride of ancestry incomprehensible to us ephemeral things, a very commendable pride, you will perhaps say, in the stump of an old tree! Be it so, but I must begin the last sentence again. This oak, which was, or pretended to be, the twelfth in descent from one that grew on the same slope at the creation, was a marvellous linguist, having in the course of its own five centuries, acquired all the knowledge that had been accumulated in its family, and transmitted by due inheritance from sire to son, for nearly six thousand years. My Royal Oak, however, was very kind and condescending to me; and from his sage lessons I learned as much of the works of nature and art, of the actions of animals human and brute, of ethics and English grammar, as you might suppose a violet of tolerable parts, improving every instant, could acquire in ten days; so that when I came of age on the eleventh, |