| | 1 | Author: | Tolstoy, Leo graf, 1828-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Hadji Murad  | | | | Published: | 2001 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I WAS returning home by the fields. It was midsummer; the hay harvest
was over, and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season
of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers — red white and
pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright
yellow centres and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape
blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped;
creeping vetch; yellow red and pink scabious; plantains with
faintly-scented neatly-arranged purple, slightly pink-tinged blossoms;
cornflowers, bright blue in the sunshine and while still young, but
growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and
delicate quickly-withering almond-scented dodder flowers. I gathered a
large nosegay of these different flowers, and was going home,
when I noticed in a ditch, in full bloom, a beautiful thistle plant of
the crimson kind, which in our neighborhood they call "Tartar," and
carefully avoid when mowing — or, if they do happen to cut it down,
throw out from among the grass for fear of pricking their hands.
Thinking to pick this thistle and put it in the center of my nosegay, I
climbed down into the ditch, and, after driving away a velvety
bumble-bee that had penetrated deep into one of the flowers and had
there fallen sweetly asleep, I set to work to pluck the flower. But this
proved a very difficult task. Not only did the stalk prick on every
side — even through the handkerchief I wrapped round my hand — but it
was so tough that I had to struggle with it for nearly five minutes,
breaking the fibres one by one; and when I had at last plucked it, the
stalk was all frayed, and the flower itself no longer seemed so fresh
and beautiful. Moreover, owing to a coarseness and stiffness, it did
not seem in place among the delicate blossoms of my nosegay. I felt
sorry to have vainly destroyed a flower that looked beautiful in its
proper place, and I threw it away. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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