It Was Not, I Think, Till My Eighth Year That I Began To Be Distinctly
Conscious Of Something More Than
This mere childish delight in nature.
It may have been there all the time from infancy - I don't know; but
When I began to know it consciously it was as if some hand had
surreptitiously dropped something into the honeyed cup which gave it
at certain times a new flavour. It gave me little thrills, often
purely pleasurable, at other times startling, and there were occasions
when it became so poignant as to frighten me. The sight of a
magnificent sunset was sometimes almost more than I could endure and
made me wish to hide myself away. But when the feeling was roused by
the sight of a small and beautiful or singular object, such as a
flower, its sole effect was to intensify the object's loveliness.
There were many flowers which produced this effect in but a slight
degree, and as I grew up and the animistic sense lost its intensity,
these too lost their magic and were almost like other flowers which
had never had it. There were others which never lost what for want of
a better word I have just called their magic, and of these I will give
an account of one.
I was about nine years old, perhaps a month or two more, when during
one of my rambles on horseback I found at a distance of two or three
miles from home, a flower that was new to me.
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