September. They are as interesting to me as most
flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part
is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem,
branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish
purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various
hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are
gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and
even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a
brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to
anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_,
from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green
berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on
the same plant.

We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It
is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright
sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at
this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the
twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove
of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where
they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple
with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears
a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as
if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives
at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not
premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as
perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the
Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane,
for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries
between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid
these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse
a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the
pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not
confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a
foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had
no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by
some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are
used in some