HADJI MURAD - CHAPTER # 1 - # 18
CHAPTER # 1 # 1 > I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer; the hay harvest was over, and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers__red white and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centres and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow red and pink scabious; plantains with faintly-scented nearly-arranged purple, slightly oink-tinged blossoms; corn-flowers, bright blue in the sunshine and while still young, but growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate quickly-withering almond-scented dodder flowers. I gather a large nosegay of these different flowers, and was going home, when I noticed in a ditch, in full blossom, a beautiful thistle plant of the crimson kind, which in our neighbourhood they call "Tarta...