ure.

VI.

A CINDERELLA AMONG FLOWERS.

Like torches lit for carnival,
The fiery lilies straight and tall
Burn where the deepest shadow is;
Still dance the columbines cliff-hung,
And like a broidered veil outflung
The many-blossomed clematis.

SUSAN COOLIDGE.

A rough, scraggy plant, with unattractive, dark-green foliage and a
profusion of buds standing out at all angles, is, in July, almost the
only growing thing to be seen on the barren-looking mesa around Colorado
Springs. Anything more unpromising can hardly be imagined; the coarsest
thistle is a beauty beside it; the common burdock has a grace of growth
far beyond it; the meanest weed shows a color which puts it to shame.
Yet if the curious traveler pass that way again, late in the afternoon,
he shall find that "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these." He will see the bush transfigured; its angular form hidden under
a mass of many pointed stars of snowy whiteness, with clusters of pale
gold stamens. Then will stand revealed the "superb mentzelia," a true
Cinderella, fit only for ignominious uses in the morning, but a suitable
bride for the fairy prince in the evening.

To look at the wide-stretching table-lands, where, during its season,
this fairy-story transformation takes place daily, so burned by the sun,
and swept by the wind, that no cultivated plant will flourish on it, one
would never suspect that it is the scene of a brilliant "procession of
flowers" from spring to fall. "There is always something going on
outdoors worth seeing," says Charles Dudley Warner, and of no part of
the world is this more true than of these apparently desolate plains at
the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is the reward of the daily
stroller, not only in the inspiration of its pure, bracing air, the
songs of its meadow-larks, and the glory of its grand mountain view, but
in its charming flower show.

This begins with the anemone, modest and shy like our own, but three
times as big, and well protected from the sharp May breezes by a soft,
fluffy silk wrap. Then some day in early June the walker shall note
groups of long, sword-shaped leaves, rising in clusters here and there
from the ground. He may not handle them with impunity, for they are
strong and sharp-edged, and somewhat later the beauty they are set to
guard is revealed. A stem or two, heavy and loaded with hard green
balls, pushes itself up among them day by day, till some mor