THE PATH OF VISION
epidemic of smallpox in our village, and the boy, my playmate, was carried off by the disease. I was so angry with the Saint for answering in this instance my prayer that never after would I pray to him or pick the violets in his name. For if he heard me when I offered the prayer, I argued, he must have heard me also when I took it back. Thus early did I waver in my religious devotion; but nature, nevertheless, continued to bring me her presents, the flowers. Which made me love her the more. I even set up for myself a local Saint of her own,—St. Cyclamen I called him,—in a grove of pines, under the protection of the Cross. Why did I compromise with the Church, I knew not then—I know not now. But there it is, in the pine-grove, my Temple of the Flowers and the Christ. And whether a lover of nature be a poet, or a philosopher, or a child, he can at best only pretend to be indifferent to the call of the flowers of his own locality, which bloom every year on the altar of his faith. Perennially they call, and, although
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