The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings

The May Flower and Miscellaneous Writings is by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and its introduction quotes a report to the legislature of Massachusetts on the trees and shrubs of that state, which describes The May Flower. The description says that fragrant, pearly-white or rose-colored flowers are often seen rising from beneath the edge of a snow bank, from this earliest harbinger of spring.

James acts the agreeable to perfection, going down into the garden to look at Uncle Lot's wonderful cabbages and walking all around the corn patch. In a talk with an uncle, the uncle asks whether the listener often complains of coldness and deadness in religious feelings and of lifelessness and want of interest, and says that coldness and lifelessness are the result of forcing the mind to one set of thoughts and feelings. Brother Tom pushes open the door, brings the little recusant in his arms and sets her on her father's knee, and the narrator remarks that she was just at that age when babyhood is verging into childhood.