Midsummer J^ 



rule, as we shall note later ; but the least 

 observing must admit the intensity of the 

 colors which now prevail, colors which 

 are not perhaps more brilliant than the 

 later ones, but which, it seems to me, are 

 far more suggestive of summer. It may 

 be argued that this is merely a matter of 

 association; that if the golden-rods and 

 asters were in the habit of flowering in 

 July, and if the lilies and milkweeds or- 

 dinarily postponed their appearance till 

 September, the former would seem to us 

 the ones which embodied most vividly 

 the idea of heat and sunlight, while the 

 latter would typify, in a perfectly satis- 

 factory fashion, the colder season. 



I am ready to acknowledge that we are 

 victimized sometimes by our sensitiveness 

 to association ; recalling clearly a certain 

 childish conviction that one could rec- 

 ognize Sunday by the peculiarly golden 

 look of its sunlight, and by the long, 

 mysterious slant of its shadows in the or- 

 70 



