Ah! sorrowfully do I confess it!  It was I. In my early years I searched the woods and meadows, scaled rocks, forded bogs, and scrutinized each shady thicket, with murderous intent.  I bore my drooping victims home, and sacrificed them relentlessly to science.  With my own hand I turned the screw that crushed out all that was lovely and graceful and delicate about them.  How I wearied myself over that flower-press!  How anxiously I watched over the stiff stalks and shrivelled leaves,—­all that was left!  How perseveringly I changed and dried the papers, jammed my fingers between the heavy boards, and blistered my hands with that obstinate screw!  And how cordially I hated it all!  I liked the fun of gathering the flowers, the triumph of finding new specimens, and the excitement of hazardous scrambles; but as for the rest it was drudgery, which I went through only from a stern sense of duty.  Now, thanks to the busy little fingers that passed over these leaves, I have a fund of amusement laid up for me; for every page has its story, and each mutilated flower is the centre of a beautiful picture.  Here the ludicrous and the pathetic are so exquisitely blended, that I laugh with a regretful feeling at my heart, and sigh even when smiles are on my face.  The first few pages are light and joyous, full of a child’s warm impulses and ready zeal, and enlivened here and there by some roguish caprice.  That was the time when, in my simplicity, I loved dandelions and buttercups, and could see beauty even in the common white-weed of the fields.  Ah! here they are, arranged in whimsical positions,—­Clover and Sorrel, Violets and Blue-eyed Grass, Peppergrass and Dock (O, how hard that was to press!), Mouse-Ear and Yarrow, Shepherd’s Purse, Buttercups, and full-blown Dandelion, Succory, and Chickweed, and Gill-run-over-the-ground,—­with their homeliest names written in sprawling characters, all down hill, beneath them.  I did not aspire to botanical names in those days.  I thought nothing was unfit for my new Herbarium.  Such was my zeal, that I believe I should have filled it entirely in a few days, if I had not been counselled to make a judicious selection.  I had a faculty for bringing home plants impossible to press, and insisting upon making the experiment.  I slept for a week with my bed-post tilted up on a huge book, wherein reposed a water-lily, obstinately refusing to lie flat.  All kinds of woody plants, too, were my delight, though they invariably came out of the press as they went in, except that the leaves were in every variety of unnatural position.  I never grew weary, either, of gathering stately and graceful green ferns, and finding them all “cockled up,” as the phrase went, when I got home.  I believe I made some experiments on a horsechestnut blossom once; but as it is not to be found in my Herbarium, I am inclined to think they were unsuccessful.  How happy children are with any new possession!  I thought there never was any thing quite equal to my