The two had scarce a thought in common: one was
impulsive, prone to throw himself on the stream of circumstance, to waft
with the wind, and blossom with the spring; the other was the great
mountain-pine, distilling the same aroma in all atmospheres, extending
fibrous roots against Nature's granite, whenceever it comes up. How
could the two harmonize? They could not, and a time of trial came. We
knew, before it came, why Doctor Percival's little white office held
Abraham so many hours in the day. It was because the Mountain-Pine found
in the moss of Redleaf the sweet Trailing-Arbutus."
She asked me if I knew the flower; and when I answered her with my words
of love of it, she said, "she had always thought it was one of Eden's
own bits of blossomry, that, missing man from the hallowed grounds,
crept out to know his fate, and, finding him so forlornly unblest, had
sacrificed its emerald leaves, left in the Garden, and, creeping into
mosses, lived, waiting for man's redemption. We used to call Mary
'The Arbutus,' and it was pleasant to see the great rough branches of
Abraham's nature drooping down, more and more, toward the pink-and-white
pale flower that looked into the sky, from a level as lofty as the
Pine's highest crown.
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