You have half forgotten many a famous scene that you travelled far to
look upon. You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc,
the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of
Patti's crystalline voice has left no distinct echo in your remembrance,
and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of
a dream. But there is a nameless valley among the hills where you can
still trace every curve of the stream, and see the foam-bells floating
on the pool below the bridge, and the long moss wavering in the current.
There is a rustic song of a girl passing through the fields at sunset,
that still repeats its far-off cadence in your listening ears. There
is a small flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the
open sky, that never withers through all the changing years; the wind
passes over it, but it is not gone--it abides forever in your soul, an
amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth.

White heather is not an easy flower to find. You may look for it among
the highlands for a day without success. And when it is discovered,
there is little outward charm to commend it. It lacks the grace of the
dainty bells that hang so abundantly from the Erica Tetralix, and the
pink glow of the innumerable blossoms of the common heather. But then it
is a symbol. It is the Scotch Edelweiss. It means sincere affection,
and unselfish love, and tender wishes as pure as prayers. I shall always
remember the evening when I found the white heather on the moorland
above Glen Ericht. Or, rather, it was not I that found it (for I have
little luck in the discovery of good omens, and have never plucked a
four-leaved clover in my life), but my companion, the gentle Mistress
of the Glen, whose hair was as white as the tiny blossoms, and yet
whose eyes were far quicker than mine to see and name every flower that
bloomed in those lofty, widespread fields.