FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 213 
are the purple gerardias with which August 
and September embroider the pasture and 
the woodland road. They have not the 
sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even the 
faint elusive odor of the violet, but for dain- 
tiness of form, perfection of color, and grace- 
fulness of habit it would be impossible to 
praise them too highly. Of our three spe- 
cies, my own favorite is the one of the nar- 
row leaves (Gerardia tenuifolia), its longer 
and slighter flower-stems giving it an airi- 
ness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady 
to whom I had brought a handful the other 
day expressed it well when she said, ‘They 
look like fairy flowers.”” They are of my 
mind in this: they love a dry, sunny open- 
ing in the woods, or a grassy field on the 
edge of woods, especially if there be a sel- 
dom-used path running through it. I know 
not with what human beings to compare them. 
Perhaps their antitypes of our own kind are 
yet to be evolved. But I have before now 
seen a woman who might worthily be set in 
their company, —a person whose sweet and 
wise actions were so gracefully carried and 
so easily let fall as to suggest an order 
and quality of goodness quite out of rela- 
tion to common flesh and blood. 
