When morning broke, little wisps of mist, like curls of white smoke, were drifting on the surface of the river as it journeyed through the canyon of cliffs and trees, dark as the walls of night, toward the valley where the widening sea of day was slowly changing from gray to rosy gold. Caught in a cove where the water was still these little wisps gathered together and crept in folds up the face of the cliff, as if they fain would climb to the very top where the red cedars ran like a row of battlements, twisting their stunted trunks over the brink and hanging their dark foliage in a fringe eighty feet above the water. But the cliff had for centuries defied all climbers, though it gave footing here and there to a few friendly plants. At its base the starry-rayed leaf-cup shed a heavy scent in the stillness of the moist morning. Higher, at the entrance to a little cave, the aromatic spikenard, with purple stems and big leaves, stood like a sentinel. From crannies in the limestone wall the harebell hung, its last flowers faded, but its foliage still delicately beautiful, like the tresses of some wraith of the river, clinging to the grim old cliff, and waiting, like Andromeda, for a Perseus. Tiny blue-green leaves of the cliff-brake, strung on slender, shining stems, contrasted their delicate grace with the ruggedness of the old cliff. Still higher, where a little more moisture trickled down from the wooded ridge above, the walking fern climbed step by step, patiently pausing to take new footings by sending out roots from the end of each long, pointed leaf. Near the top of the cliff, where the red cedars gave some shade, little communities of bulb-bearing ferns and of polypody displayed their exquisite fronds, as welcome in a world of beauty as smiles on a mother's face. Mosses and lichens grew here and there, staining the face of the old cliff gray, green and yellow. These tiny ferns and mosses, each drawing the sort of sustenance it needed from the layers of the limestone, seemed greater than the mountain of rock. Imposing and spectacular, yet the rock was dead,—the mausoleum for countless forms of the old life that ceased to be in ages long forgotten. These fairy forms that sprang from it were the beginnings of the new life, the better era, the cycle of the future, living, breathing, almost sentient things, transforming the stubborn stone into beauty of color and form, into faith that moves mountains and hope that makes this hour the center of all eternity. For them the river had been patiently working through the centuries, scoring its channel just a little deeper, cutting down ever so little each year the face of the cliff. Eternity stretched backward to the time when the little stream running between the thin edges of the melting ice sheets at the top of the high plateau first began to cut the channel and scarp this mighty cliff; still backward through untold ages to the time when the lowest layer of limestone in the cliff was only soft sediment on the shore of a summer sea. Eternity stretched forward, also, to the time when this perpendicular wall shall have been worn to a gentle slope, clad with luxuriant verdure, and adorned, perchance, with fairer flowers than any which earth now knows; still forward through other untold ages to the time when all earth's fires shall have cooled; when wind, rain, storm and flood, shall have carried even the slope to the sea and made this planet a plain like Mars. Now is the golden age; this hour is the center of eternity.

Red tints of the sunrise brightened into yellow, then followed the white light of an August day. Now the morning mist has gone; woods, fields and river lie silent in the hot, bright, apathetic morning. Peace reigns over the smiling fields where Plenty pours from her golden horn. Here, on the ridge at the top of the cliff, the woods stretch back half a mile to meet the prairie. Straight down from the red cedars on the brink of the rock the river softly eddies round a huge boulder,—the remnant of some cliff tragedy countless years ago. In the rent of the rock from which it fell a turkey-buzzard often sits and spreads her huge wings as the boats glide by. Storms have scalloped pockets in the softer strata; in them still hang the phoebe's nests, which were filled with young birds in June. Here and there a swallow's hole may be seen in the rock; earlier in the season the young birds often peeped out from these holes as if wishing for strength to come speedily to their wings. Across the river there is a wide beach where the low water makes ripple-marks in the sand. Narrow leaves of sand-bar willows fringe the shore, and back of these are the shining leaves of the oaks. Down the river there are glimpses of the fields,—yellow stubble where the grain has been cut, serried ranks of the green and tan where the far-flung guidons of the tasselled corn stretch away up the slope like a mighty army to demolish the cloud-castles of refuge on the far horizon where the mists fled for safety from the pursuing rays of the sun. Overhead the oak-leaves are motionless, like the comforting, brooding wings of Peace. It is a time for rest and quiet joy in the beauty and the fulness of the year. Now, in the grateful shade of some friendly old oak, is the time to "loaf and invite my soul."

Happy is the man who has made a companion of some fine old tree standing near his home, type of the tree which he loved in his boyhood, perchance the very same huge white oak. He learns to go to it as he would to his friend, to let the old tree share his sorrows and his joys. Others may be heedless of its charm, ignorant of its power to help, but for him it always has a welcome and a ministry of beauty. He learns to visit it often, to talk to it in his thoughts. Some dreamy summer morning he muses on its history, its service to mankind. The old tree seems to bend its branches down to listen as he says:

"I know you, old tree, and I love you. You belong to one of the first and finest families. The remains of your ancestors have been found in the eocene and miocene rocks, away, way north of your home at the present time. They grew in beauty long before man's face was seen upon the earth. The whole of civilization has rested beneath your ancestral shade. Long before the Eternal City was founded your ancestors adorned the seven hills and beautified the grass beneath with the flickering shadows cast by their sunlit leaves. Some of them which gave shade to the first habitations in the proud city that from her throne of beauty ruled the world were still fine and flourishing centuries later when Pliny sat beneath them in studious contemplation. Others of your ancestors, old tree, formed the sacred grove of Dodona, where the oracles spake to minds as yet in darkness. They were accounted fit to compare in might and majesty with Jove himself, and some of them stood like sturdy sentinels around his Roman temple. The civic crown which adorned the brows of Roman heroes as a reward for great deeds done, was made of green leaves from their branches. In the shadow of your ancestors Pan played his pipes, Theocritus sat and listened to the everlasting laughter of the summer sea and his shepherds and goatherds reclined to engage in their friendly contests of song. Vergil in his eclogues paid tribute to their beauty and grandeur. They guarded the Druids' sacred fire and some of them are living yet which gave shelter to the victorious legions of William the Conqueror when he crossed the channel more than two thousand years ago. Hearts of oak made the ships which helped a nation fight her way to the supremacy of the sea and also the caravels which bore an intrepid discoverer across the weary waste of waters to the threshold of the new home for all those seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Some of your ancestors made the log cabins to shelter the band of pioneers led by the pious Hooker into the valley of the Connecticut and another preserved the precious charter until the storm of tyranny had passed. It is your family, old tree, which has lent itself willingly to the service of man, in the comfort and stability of his home and in the panels and carvings which adorn the great cathedrals he has built for the worship of his Creator and the enrichment of his own soul."

Still the old tree listens. The heart warms toward it as memory speaks of its companionship through the years:

"And I have watched you, old tree, in storm and in sunshine; in the early winter when the soft snow stuck fast to your rugged old trunk and your branches and twigs and made you a picture of purity; and in the later winter when the fierce storms wrestled in vain with your sinewy limbs. While the other trees of the forest were tossing hither and thither, bent and broken by the blast, you stood in calm poise and dignity, nodding and swaying towards me as if to show me how to withstand adversity. And I have watched your pendulous blossoms daily grow more beautiful among the miracles of early May when the sunshine of the flower-spangled days made you a vision of tender green and gold. I have seen your tiny leaves creep out of their protecting bud-scales in the springtime, their upper surfaces touched with a pink more lovely than that on the cheek of a child, while below they were clothed with a silvery softness more delicately fair than the coverlid in the cradle of a king. I have watched them develop into full-grown leaves with lobes as rounded and finely formed as the tips of ladies' fingers and I have noted how well the mass of your foliage has protected your feathered friends and their naked nestlings from the peltings of the hail, the drenchings of the rain and the scorching of the summer sun. I have gloried in the grateful shade you gave alike to happy children in their play and to tired parents weary and worn with the work and the worry of the world; and it was then, old tree, that you taught me to be sympathetic and hospitable. And I have watched your fruit ripen and fall, to be eagerly seized by the wild folk of the woodland and stored, some of it in the holes of your own trunk, for use during the long winter. You taught me to be generous and they gave me lessons in forethought and frugality. Later in the autumn I have watched your green leaves take on a wondrous wine-red beauty, as the splendor of a soul sometimes shines most vividly in the hour before it is called home; and they taught me not to grieve or to murmur because death must come to us all. In the winter I have seen the squirrel digging beneath the snow to find the acorns he had planted in the fall. He didn't find them all; some of them came up in the springtime as tiny trees and spoke to me of the life that knows no end."

Now a woodchuck, fat from a summer's feeding, climbs heavily to a tree stump and seats himself to pass the morning in his favorite avocation of doing nothing. He worked during the night or the very early morning, for fresh dirt lay at the entrance to his hole. Evidently he had been enlarging it for the winter. Like a Plato at his philosophies he sits now, slowly moving his head from side to side, as if steeping his senses in the beauty of the world around him so that all the dreams of his long winter sleep shall be pleasant. A persistent fly, a slap, and the woodchuck hears. He turns that dark gray, solemn looking face, and asks mutely, reproachfully, perhaps resentfully, why his reverie has been disturbed. Then he hastily scurries to his burrow and he will not again appear though I sit here all day.

From a hole in the side of a fallen log the chipmunk peeps warily, comes out quickly, but whisks back again in fancied fright. Soon he returns and sits on the log awhile, barking his bird-like "chip, chip," and flirting his tail with each note. Then he sets about gathering the old oak leaves which were piled near the log by the winds last March and have lain undisturbed through the summer. Grabbing two or three in his mouth, he pushes them into his pouches with his paws and is gone into his hole like a flash. The hole in the log is the entrance to the long passageway which goes down perpendicularly for three feet, and then gradually ascends, until at a distance of eight feet it is about a foot below the surface of the ground. Here the chipmunk will pass the cold days of winter, snugly sleeping in his leafy bed which he is now preparing, with a store of food nearby to use in wakeful spells of warm weather and in the lean days next spring after he has fairly roused himself from lethargy. For half an hour he comes and goes, carrying two or three, even four leaves at a time. Then he comes a little farther away from the log, suddenly looks up and sees me sitting. He stops short, breathes quickly, his little sides tremble; I take out an old envelope and write his description, like this:

"Size, about half way between a mouse and a rat, five or six inches long, with a tail perhaps five inches more, about as big around as a man's thumb, bushy, but of even size the whole length, top of head dark gray, yellowish circles about the shining black eyes; short, erect ears; light gray underneath, with whitish legs; a narrow black stripe down the middle of the back, then on either side, a stripe of reddish gray; then a stripe of black, next a stripe of yellow, then black again and after that, reddish fox color down to the whitish under-parts."

At length the chipmunk makes a dash for the thicket ten feet away and his "chip, chip," rings out excitedly as he reaches the friendly shelter.

The chipmunk is not the only woods creature preparing for winter during the hottest days of August. For more than a week the flying squirrel has been making the small mossy cup acorns rain down on the roof of the bungalow. He begins on them when they are scarcely acorns, merely green cups with a dot at the top. But he knows. He bites them in two, and deftly extracts the acorn, which is in the milky state, scarcely as large as a pea. He does it in the darkness, but with amazing rapidity. Speeding from twig to twig, from one cluster of acorns to another, he cuts the cups in two and extracts the meat so fast that the pieces rain down on the roof. When he is working at top speed, he will probably average twenty acorns a minute. In the morning the roof of the porch is covered with pieces of the husks.

For half an hour after sunset he keeps up this fast speed. Apparently he is getting supper after his long sleep through the day. At the end of half an hour he begins to work more leisurely. The pieces fall on the roof every now and then. Possibly he is taking the sweetmeats to his hole, high up in a tree. Through the night there is the intermittent sound of his labor. Sometimes, towards morning, he drops in for a visit,—literally drops in, by way of the chimney and the open fireplace. He knows no fear. Going to the kitchen, he helps himself to the doughnut left on the table for him. If it is a whole one, he nibbles all around it. If only half a one he carries it away. You may close the kitchen door and catch him with your bare hands. He will neither squeal nor bite. But he makes a poor pet, because he sleeps in the daytime and works in the darkness. He strongly dislikes the light. If put into a box he backs up into the darkest corner, brings his beautiful flat tail between his four legs and up over his nose and his eyes. Rolled up lengthwise in this ball he spends the day; but when evening comes he is active enough. If kept for any length of time he makes a very docile pet and will beg permission to sleep in your pocket. But it is better to give him his freedom, and see him scamper up one tree and "fly" to another. As he springs he spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the accomplishment of an upward curve.

Crickets and katydids droned and fiddled all night, and when the katydids quit at daybreak, other grasshoppers and cicadas were ready to take their places in the screechy orchestra. Night and day they shrill their ceaseless music. It is all masculine love music, as much an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and June. Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the evening of July 29. Then the long-legged conductor waved his baton and the orchestra was off. It started moderato, but quickly increased to an allegro, and sometimes it is almost presto. For the first two weeks in August new fiddlers were constantly being added, and now there are enough to fill every band stand all through the woods. The noise at night is almost ear-splitting. The old preacher was right about it. There are times when the grasshopper is a burden. At the hour of sunset the cicada winds his rattle most joyously, subsiding into silence as darkness comes and making way for the katydid.

The screechy orchestra is a poor substitute for the grand birds' concerts of June and July. For the birds, August is a month of silence. Except for an occasional solo, nearly all the birds are silent, moulting and moping in the thickets. If you steal into the thicket you may find the thrushes and the thrashers feeding on the ground. Once in a while one of them shows himself in the morning or the evening, but not often. Nesting done, the brown thrasher ceased his long and brilliant solos from the treetops after the first week of July. Next week the catbird's song was heard for the last time. Because the first nest of the wood thrush was robbed by the blue-jays, a second nest was built. This family was safely reared, and the wood thrush sang until the third week in July, when one clear sunset night, the sky all aglow with banners of golden red, he sang his farewell solo. For seven weeks the Maryland yellow throat sang just at the turn of the old woods road, where his mate had her nest in a low bush. As the babies waxed large his song waned, and he was not heard during the last week in July, nor since. Still the dickcissel, the lark sparrow and the indigo bunting continued their trio. Evidently their babies were somewhere over in the field nearby, a field that was corn last year, and now is grown up thickly with smartweed. August came with a rush of the mercury above the ninety mark, and there it has stayed. A week of it was enough for this trio. They ceased their concert work, but now and then the lark sparrow pipes up a feeble imitation of his sweet notes in July. Like the song sparrow, he cannot wholly refrain from expressing his satisfaction in being alive. Many men and women are just like that. The vireos also ceased singing at the end of the first week in August, but sometimes the red-eye gives a little preachment from his leafy pulpits in the woods. Latest among the singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of course, the goldfinches and the cuckoos. The young chewinks left their nests in the pasture on the third, and the chewink's feelings expressed themselves in song for two weeks after that. He out-sang the field sparrows, whose young were hatched August third, and left their nest on the twelfth. Apparently the field sparrow stopped singing and went to work providing for his family of three. But the chewink was not to be sobered so quickly. Why not sing with the work? The days are long enough, happy enough, for both. Even now he gives occasional bursts of song. Evidently this is the theory of the tanager also, for he sang all through July, and here in mid-August his trumpet tones occasionally ring through the leafy silences of the woods. The young wood pewees which left their nests on the eleventh are now able to shift for themselves; but the parents have much the same song as they had when the three eggs lay in the nest, saddled to the burr-oak bough. Still, through the peaceful morning air comes the loud, clear, cheery call of the Bob White—a note that has in it health and vigor for the healing of many a tired heart. As for the cuckoo, well, his mate is guarding those bluish-green eggs in the apology for a nest built in the lower branches of a young black-oak; they will not be hatched until the very last of the month. He does his best to be cheerful and to make a joyful sound. "Kut-Kut-Kut," and "Kow-Kow-Kow"—you may often hear the latter sound in the middle of the night. Does he try to let his lady dear know that he is near her through the darkness, or is he happily singing in his dreams?

Perched on a mullen spike, a goldfinch is singing to his mate, whose nest is in a sapling not far away. His jet black wings fold over his yellow back, shaping it into a pointed shield of gold. He is so happy and so fond that he can not bear long to remain out of her sight. Now he sings a tender serenade, then his joy rises to ecstasy. He takes wings and floats up and down the imaginary waves, circling higher and higher, his sweet notes growing more rapturous until finally they reach their climax as he goes abruptly skyward. Then his fluttering wings close, and he drops from a height of perhaps forty or fifty feet, to alight again on his original perch and resume his tender serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a ripple of moonlit water looks. This love-song of the goldfinch is the climax of the summer's bird-song. If there were none other, the summer would be worth while.

Dreamily sitting on a bare twig, the wood pewee is content. She has raised her family, they are now able to get their own food. Though she is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content to sit and wait for the food to come her way. Now she circles from her perch and returns. Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck together.

Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the blossoms of their sweets. He passes on undismayed; there are more flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red, show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open the wing petals from the standard. Instantly the keel snaps down as if a steel spring had been released. The bee is dusted with pollen, which he carries with him to fertilize another flower. How did the flower learn to fashion that mechanism, to construct those highly colored nectar-guides? How many centuries of accumulated intelligence or instinct,—call it what the scientists please,—are there behind that action of the bee, thrusting his head just where those nectar-guides are placed? Is the bee more sentient than the flower? Or, is the flower which provided the nectar and placed the nectar-guides just at the right place on the bright blossoms, as special allurements for the senses of the bee, the more to be admired for its intelligence? One by one the bee opens the flowers, which were so fresh and beautiful at sunrise. When he goes to his nest in the grass at evening, they will all have been drained of their nectar, and the petals will be wilted by the sun. But they have achieved their object, the ovules have been fertilized. Tomorrow morning there will be many bright, new blossoms, their nectar crying to the bees, like the voice in Omar Khayyam's tavern to those outside the door:

Now there comes sidling, gliding along the barbed wire fence, the Baltimore oriole, always a charming fellow because of his flaming plumage, which has won for him the name of the golden robin and firebird. He walks along the wire fence in a gliding, one-leg-at-a-time fashion, as he often does on the twig of a tree. His head is down, he is on the lookout for caterpillars. Now he reaches the tick-trefoil, and nips out some stamens from its purple blossoms, which he eats with relish.

The work of the year will soon be done. Most of the trees have completed the growth for the year and nothing remains but to complete the filling of the buds which already have formed for next year. Pull down a twig of the white-oak and you find a cluster of terminal buds at the end, marking the close of this year's growth, each of them containing the nucleus of next year's life. In the axils of the leaves on the elm are the little jeweled buds which will be brown and dull all winter, but will shine like garnets when the springtime comes. The fat, green buds on the linden are yellowing now, and next they are to be tinted into the ruby red which is so attractive in the winter months when contrasted with the snow.

As the sun nears the zenith the heat waves on the ridges, and across the cornfields seem to have a rhythmic motion, as if they are manifestations of the great throbbing pulse-beat of nature, working at almost feverish haste to ripen her fruits and prepare for the winter in the few weeks of summer that yet remain. And now the sunshine has a new and deeper meaning. If we have ever complained of it, we hasten to pray pardon. Not only in the cornfields, where the milky ears are fast filling, but all over upland and lowland, in woods and fields and meadows, Nature is busy making and storing starch and sugar, protein and albumen, that the earth and all that therein is may have cause to rejoice in the fullness of the year. Above the ground she stores it in drupe and pome and berry, nut and nutlet and achene, and below the ground in rootstock and rhizome, corm and tuber, pumping them full with strokes quick and strong in these grand climacteric days of the summer. All the water which seemed so useless in April, all the rain which seemed so superfluous and so dreary in May and June, has been used. Not a drop of it was wasted. Its office was to feed life, to dissolve the substances in the rocks and the soils which the plants needed, to be mixed with the sunshine in the manufacture of food for the present and for the future. Nor is the heat nor the light wasted. Both are stored in the trunks of the trees, and when in the winter the back log sends out its steady heat and the foresticks their cheerful blaze, the old tree will give back, measure for measure, the light and heat it has stored through the years. Let us rejoice in the fervent heat and the grand work of the August days. So a man works as he approaches his ideals. Feebly at first he begins. Winds of adversity buffet him, cold disdain would freeze his ambition, hot scorn would shrivel his soul. Still he perseveres, striving towards his ideal, firmly rooted in faith and his heart ever open for the beauty and the sunshine of the world. In periods of storm and cloud, his heart, like the sun, makes its own warmth and splendor, knowing that the season of its strength shall come. When he seems to be growing nearer his ideal his fervor is at August heat; for him there is no burden in the heat of the day; tirelessly, joyously, he strives, achieves, attains. Thus he does his share of the work of the world and adds his mite to the heritage of its future.

The plants of the woodlands seem strangely unfamiliar since the springtime. If you have not called upon them during these months that have fled so swiftly you will almost feel the need of being introduced to them again. Some of them, such as the Dutchman's breeches and the bluebell, have gone, like the beautiful children who died when life was young. Others have grown away from you, like the children you used to know in the days gone by, so strangely altered now. The little uvularia, whose leaves were so soft and silky in May and whose blossom drooped so prettily, like a golden bell, is tall, and branched now, and its leaves are stiff and papery. Its curious, triangular, leathery pods have lifted their lids at the top and discharged their bony seeds. The blood-root, the hepatica, and the wild ginger are showing big and healthy leaves, but the few lady slippers, here and there, have faded almost beyond recognition.

When the summer shower patters down among the leaves the music of the insect orchestra ceases and the performers shield their instruments with their wings. It passes and gleams of sunshine make jewels of the raindrops. Then a little breeze brings the aroma of the blossoming bergamot, wild mint, basil and catnip, filling the air with a spicy fragrance. The insects tune up; soon the orchestra is at it again. White cumulus clouds appear, floating lazily in the azure, reflected by the river below. They chase the sunlight across the amber stubble of the oat-fields and weave huge pictures which flash and fade among the swaying tassels of the corn.

And oh, the color-splendor of these August days! Here at the top of the cliff, the orange-flowered milkweed still flames in beauty, mingled with the pink and lavender bergamot and the varied yellows of the sunflowers and the rosin weeds. Down nearer the water's edge where the shelves of the cliff are layered with soil, the virgin's bower twines clusters of creamy white. On the grassy shore where the river begins to leave the rocks the brilliant blue lobelia is breaking into blossom, contrasted with the bright lemon yellow of the helenium. Masses of pink light up shady places where the false dragonhead grows, and the jewel weeds are thickly hung with pendant blossoms of orange and pale yellow. The river winds along the low shores and reedy shallows, sometimes partly losing itself in placid ponds, gay with the crimson and green and blue of the dragon-flies, and fringed by dark green reeds and rushes from which Pan might well have made his pipes to charm the gods, and the Naiads of the sacred fount. Onward it goes, now passing by a sloping bank which the gray-leaved golden rod has covered with a wealth of golden glory; for this low-growing golden rod which blossoms so early, is the most brilliantly and richly golden of them all.

Great fluffy masses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller clusters of royal purple in the grassy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A stretch of grassy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is gemmed with the thick purple clusters of the milkwort, which shines among the grass as the early blossoms of the clover used to do when the summer was young. Here and there the little bag-like blossoms of the gerardia, or foxglove, are opening among the stems of the fading grass, and the white blossoms of the marsh bellflower, the midget member of the campanula family, are apparently as fresh and numerous as they were in early July. Water horehound has whitish whorls of tiny blossoms and prettily cut leaves, which are as interesting as the flowers. And still the river beckons onward, murmuring that the quest of the flower-lover is not yet done and that the prize awaits the victor who presses on to the swamp around the bend where the birches hang drooping branches over quiet, fish-full pools. The prize is worth the extra half-mile. It is the gorgeous flower of late summer, a fit symbol of August, the queen blossom of a queenly month, the brilliant red lobelia, or cardinal flower. There is no flower in the year so full of vivid color. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the purple torches of the exquisite little fringed orchis (habenaria psychodes) lights up a swampy place beneath the trees and sheds its delicate fragrance as a welcome to the bees.

The life of an August day, like all life, comes too quickly to a close. In the morning of a day, of a summer, or of a life, there seems so much ahead; so many friends to help and cheer, so much beauty to behold, so many pleasant roads to roam, so much to accomplish, and so many treasures to gather by the way. But when the days are growing shorter and the twilight falls, perhaps it is enough if we can feel that we have at the best but faithful failures; perhaps enough if we have forgotten the dust and the rocks and the mire, and have treasured only the memories of the beauty and the music and the joy which was ours by the way; surely enough if we can look forward happily and peacefully to the west where

And then the glory fades to gray and beautiful Venus smiles at us just over the tops of the trees. Little is heard save the occasional note of the whip-poor-will and the constant reminder from the katydid that it is not far to frost. But the river ripples softly around the rocks and a cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping, dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan wooed his coy nymph with the promise: