Passages from the Life of a Fern

MY life has been one of such extraordinary vicissitudes as might have made many almost doubt their own identity. But it is only to-day that I have learned its real purpose. To-day, for the first time, I am content. A light has dawned on me which makes all the dark passages of my former life clear and luminous, and unites the whole into one harmonious picture. I will narrate a few of my adventures to you while I am full of this happy discovery.

The first thing I can remember is being in a world overflowing with life in every form. It was a tropical forest. Gigantic palms rose above me so high that I could not see their feathery crowns. From one erect stem to another hung tangled festoons of parasites and climbing plants, broad, rich, green leaves which fell into stately crowns with their own weight, enormous gorgeous flowers, delicate wreaths of intertwined many-coloured blossoms and many-shaped foliage; so that when I looked up, I could scarcely see one point of the deep blue sky, except when a strong wind made rifts in my fretted roof. Scarcely one ray of light fell on me pure, but broken and green and tremulous, softly shaded, or tinted like a rainbow through the flowers.