Julian and I got some very
pretty flowers, such as do not grow wild in America. I found some
exquisite harebells by the roadside, and some very delicate little
pink flowers. And I got some wild holly, which is very pretty indeed;
it has very glossy and prickery leaves. I have seen a great many
hedges made of it since I have been here; for nothing can get over it
or get through it, for it is almost as prickery as the Hawthorne [the
bush and the family name were always the same thing to us children],
of which almost all the hedges in Liverpool, and everywhere I have
been, are made; and there it grows up into high trees, so that nothing
in the world can look through it, or climb over it, or crawl through
it; and I am afraid our poor hedge in Concord will never look so well,
because the earth round it is so sandy and dry, and here it is so very
moist and rich. It ought to be moist, at any rate, for it rains
enough." But later she writes on "the eighteenth day of perfect
weather," and where can the weather seem so perfect as in England?
After breakfast on Christmas we always went to the places, in that
parlor where Christmas found us (nomads that we were), where our
mother had set out our gifts. Sometimes they were on the large
centre-table, sometimes on little separate tables, but invariably
covered with draperies; so that we studied the structure of each mound
in fascinated delay, in order to guess what the humps and hubbies
might indicate as to the nature of the objects of our treasure-trove.
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