Excerpt from The Cardinal Flower: And Other Tales Have you seen the scarlet flower called the cardinal flower? If you have not, you have not seen the most brilliant wild flower which is found in the Northern States. It commonly grows in meadows by the water courses, and lifts its brilliant head above the grass: even its growth is most luxu riant. A small brook ran through Mr. Marston's meadow. In some places its banks were fringed with the cardinal flower, which is in full bloom just about mowing-time. Little Henry went with his father to the meadow, to see him and his workmen mow. He followed the mowers, taking care to keep out of the way, and watched the tall grass as it fell prostrate before the regular, time-keeping strokes of the scythe. By and by he grew weary of this, and asked his father if there was not something he could do. His father told him that, as soon as the dew was ofl', he might spread the mown grass evenly over the ground, that it might be dried into hay; so he got the pitchfork, and waited impatiently for the time to come. He then found that the pitchfork was too heavy a tool for him to work with indeed, the handle was so large that he could hardly grasp it with his little fingers sufficiently to hold it. He began to cry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.