Sweet Williams July 1917

"There is nothing new under the sun," says the proverb. I think

the meaning is that there are just so many truths or laws of life,

and no matter how far we may think we have advanced, we

cannot get beyond those laws. However complex a structure

we build a living, we must come back to those truths, and so

we find we have traveled in a circle."

Laura Ingalls Wilder

The Man of the Place brought me

 a bouquet of wildflowers this morning.

It has been a habit of his for years. 

He never brings me cultivated flowers,

but always the wild blossoms of field and woodland, 

and I think them much more beautiful.

In my bouquet this morning was a purple flag. Do you

remember gathering them down on the flats and in the

creek bottoms when you were a barefoot child?

Wild Purple Flag 

(Iris)

There was one marshy corner of the pasture down by

the creek where the grass grew lush and green:

where the cows loved to feed and could always be found

when it was time to drive them up at night.

All through the tall grass were scattered purple and white

flag blossoms, and I have stood in that peaceful grassland corner,

with the red cow and the spotted cow and the roan,

taking their good-night mouthfuls of the sweet grass,

and watched the sun setting behind the hilltops and loved

the purple flags and the rippling brook and wondered at the

beauty of the world while I wriggled my toes down

into the soft grass.

The wild Sweet Williams in my bouquet brought a far

different picture to my mind. A window had been broken in

the schoolhouse at the country crossroads, and the pieces of glass

lay scattered where they had fallen.

Several little girls going to school for their first term had picked

handfuls of Sweet Williams and were gathered near the window.

Someone discovered that the blossoms could be pulled from

the stem and by, wetting their faces, could be stuck to the

pieces of glass in whatever fashion they were arranged.

They dried on the glass and would stay that way for hours

and, looked at through the glass, were very pretty.

Wild Sweet William

I was one of those little girls, and though I have forgotten

what it was I tried to learn out of a book that summer, I never have

forgotten the beautiful wreaths and stars and other figures we made

on the glass with the Sweet Williams. The delicate fragrance of

their blossoms this morning made me feel like a little girl again.

The little white daises with their hearts of gold grew thickly

along the path where we walked to Sunday school. 

Father and sister and I use to walk

 the two and a half miles every Sunday morning.

The horses had worked hard all the week 

and must rest this one day

and Mother would rather stay at home with baby brother, so,

with Father and sister, Mary I walked to the church through

the beauties of the sunny spring Sundays.

I have forgotten what I was taught on those days also.

I was only a little girl, you know.  But I can still plainly see the

grass and the trees and the path winding ahead, flecked with

sunshine and shadow and the beautiful golden-hearted daisies

scattered all along the way.

Wild Meadow Daisies

Ah well! That was years ago, and there have been 

 many changes since then that it would seem 

such simple things should be forgotten;

but at the long last, I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet,

simple things of life which are the real ones after all.

We heap up around us things that we do not need 

 as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.

 We gabble words like parrots

until we lose sense of their meaning;

 we chase after this new idea and that;

we take an old thought and dress it out

 in many words that the thought itself

 is lost in its clothing,

 like a slim woman in a barrel skirt,

and then we exclaim,

 "Lo, the wonderful new thought I have found!"

I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution

in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more

direct thinking. It is the simple things of life that make

living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as

love and duty, work and rest, and living close to nature.

There are no hot house blossoms that can compare in

beauty and fragrance with my bouquet of wildflowers.

Wildflower Meadow

"Sweet Williams"

July 1917

By Laura Ingalls Wilder

From the book, "Little House in the Ozarks"

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler

The Rediscovered Writings

Edited by Stephen W. Hines

(1991)

Guideposts Edition