l these youngsters in his
embrace. Those spines he must fold very close, even to the
withdrawing of them into his orange colored cambium layers, for
there is never an ouch from the group.

These are summer's flowers for remembrance, the goldenrod and
asters. She gives them to us and goes, making all early autumn
glow with her memory thereby. But old man Barberry may have these
if he will. I like best to remember her by others less common and
less permanent, flowers of shy dignity that begin to think of
departure when summer does, and vanish with the flash of her
trailing garments. Two of these, the turtle-head and the jewel-weed,
are little known to careless passers, and elderly pasture
shrubs have no chance to lure them with Attleboro jewelry. They
have their abode in cool springs in seclusion behind the pine-clad
hillside, and would, I fancy, be ashamed to be seen wandering
wantonly about the open fields. I have to make pilgrimage to their
home in the middle of the fountain head marsh to meet them, nor
are their real beauties revealed to one who carelessly splashes
in. Instead, he is liable to be mired in black mud and see nothing
so good as his way out again, nor will he even notice the elfin
laughter of black crickets and green grasshoppers who rub their
preposterously long hind legs together in glee at the joke, so
eager will he be for dry land.

The right of way leads over a level, firm trunk of a fallen tree,
one that has been so long down that only a mossy ridge indicates
its existence, to a sphagnum mound which tops a stump as old as
the causeway. A swamp maple grows at this stump as a back for my
seat in this reception room of the jewel-weeds. I think it is the
sway of the slender maple that puts me in rhythm with the mood of
the place and gives me eyes to see things as they are, for after a
little the rough swamp snarl of straggling growth unravels itself,
and things stand revealed.

There is the rough bedstraw. Somebody who saw it first shall burn
for calling such a sweet little plant such a mischancy name. I
protest that the bedstraw is worthy a better. To be sure it is
rough. The prickles that line the edges of its stems all point
back, and while they do not wound they hold you tenaciously when
you touch them. Thus the plant clings to other woodier stems and
climbs vicariously. But why bedstraw? I trust that none of the
people who came out of the ark and set about naming things as they
followed had t