t was as if some quiet and shadowy region of solitude
had been suddenly invaded by companies of maidens attired for a holiday
and joyously confident of their simple charms. The dim woodland was
illumined with the blush of conscious pleasure.

Seen at a distance the flower clusters look like big hemispheres of
flushed snow. But examine them closely and you see that each of the
rounded umbels is compounded of many separate blossoms--shallow,
half-translucent cups poised on slender stems of pale green. The cup is
white, tinted more or less deeply with rose-pink, the colour brightest
along the rim and on the outside. The edge is scalloped into five
points, and on the outer surface there are ten tiny projections around
the middle of the cup. Looking within, you find that each of these is a
little red hollow made to receive the crimson tip of a curving anther,
cunningly bent like a spring, so that the least touch may loosen it and
scatter the pollen. There is no flower in the world more exquisitely
fashioned than this. It is the emblem of a rustic maid in the sweet
prime of her morning.

We were well content with our day's voyage and our parting camp on the
river. We had done no harm; no accident had befallen us; we had seen
many lovely things and heard music from warbler and vireo, thrush and
wren, all day long. Even now a wood thrush closed his last descant in
flute-like notes across the river. Night began silently to weave her
dusky veil upon the vast loom of the forest. The pink glow had gone
from the flower-masses around us; whitely they glimmered through the
deepening shadows, and stood like gentle ghosts against the dark.
To-morrow we must paddle down to the village where the railroad crosses
the river, and hurry back to civilization and work. But to-night we
were still very far off; and we should sleep at the foot of a
pine-tree, beneath the stars, among the virgin laurels.

LITTLE RED TOM

* *
* My Uncle Peter was much interested in the war which broke out, not long
ago, among the professional nature-writers. He said that it was a civil
war, and therefore a philosopher was bound to be regardful of it,
because a civil war always involved subtle problems of psychology. He
also said that it was a most uncivil war, and that the picturesque
violence of the language employed on both sides was intrinsically
noteworthy to a philologist, and therefore he felt obliged to follow it
with care. When the Chief Magistra