It is curious that the leaf should so love the light and the root so hate it.

When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness. In this hour divinely fresh and still, the fair face of every flower salutes me with a silent joy. . . . All the cares, perplexities, and griefs of existence, all the burdens of life slip from my shoulders and leave me with the heart of a little child that asks nothing beyond the present moment of innocent bliss.

O happy, happy morning! O dear, familiar place! / O warm, sweet tears of Heaven, fast falling on my face! / O well-remembered, rainy wind, blow all my care away, / That I may be a child again this blissful morn of May.

As I hold the flower in my hand and think of trying to describe it, I realize how poor a creature I am, how impotent are words in the presence of such perfection.

Look to the East, where up the lucid sky; the morning climbs! The day shall yet be fair.

Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through.

It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.