s them gently wave
in the June sunshine or flow like a swift river across the field before a
quick gust of wind. Such variety of color! Here an emerald streak and
there a soft blue shadow, yonder a matchless olive green, and still
farther a cool gray: spreading like an enamel over the hillside where the
cattle have cropped them, and waving tall and fine above the crimsoning
blossoms of the clover; glittering with countless gems in the morning
dews and musicful with the happy songs and call notes of the quail and
prairie chicken, the meadow lark, the bob-o-link, and the dickcissel
whose young are safe among the protection of the myriad stems. Tall wild
rice and wild rye grow on the flood-plain and by the streams where the
tall buttercups shine like bits of gold and the blackbirds have their
home; bushy blue stem on the prairies and in the open woods where the
golden squaw weed and the wild geranium make charming patterns of yellow
and pink and purple and some of the painted cup left over from May still
glows like spots of scarlet rain; tall grama grass on the dry prairies
and gravelly knolls, whitened by the small spurge and yellowed by the
creeping cinquefoil; nodding fescue in the sterile soils where the
robin's plantain and the sheep sorrel have succeeded the early
everlasting; satin grasses in the moist soil of the open woodlands where
the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough grass in
the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring
are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening;
reed grass and floating manna grass in the swamps where the broad arrow
leaves of the sagittaria fringe the shore and the floating leaves and
fragrant blossoms of the water lilies adorn the pond. The three days'
rain beginning with a soft drizzle and increasing into a steady storm
which drives against the face with cutting force and shakes in sheets
like waving banners across the wind-swept prairie only adds more variety
to the beauties of the grass; and when the still, sweet morning comes,
the pure green prairies make us feel that all stain of sin and shame has
been washed from the world.

Where the grasses grow the best, there Providence has provided most
abundantly for the wealth and the comfort of mankind. The rich verdure of
the meadows is the visible sign of the fruitful soil beneath the
fattening clouds above. The clover and the early hay fill the June fields
with fragra