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and ice we were re-borne on some tide of good fortune 

 toward midsummer ! 



Some of the violets linger late or take a fresh season 

 of blooming here in October; the cinquefoil also un- 

 folds its twinkling stars, and the brave yarrow holds 

 itself up in sturdy fashion as if defying fate. The 

 asters have departed, except some late starveling 

 specimens, but the dauntless hawks-weed spreads out 

 just as brilliant gold as in the early spring. The 

 hawks-weed is a well-loved companion of a year, 

 and it and spring go journeying around the world 

 together ! 



Near the coast the pink knot-weed smiles out, and 

 we scarcely wonder that good, loving, poetic Thoreau 

 thought them bright as a " peach orchard in full 

 bloom." 



A flower not unlike in appearance to the closed 

 gentian lingers into October days — the great blue 

 lobelia. The varieties of the lobelia are strangely 

 unlike each other. In early summer we have the 

 lobelia gracilis, a fairy of a flower, delicately blue 

 with a white bar on its lower lip. The magnificent 

 cardinal flower of wet lands, superbly beautiful, one 

 of the most splendidly colored of all our wild flowers, 

 seems too haughty and stately to claim kin witli the 

 shy, modest gracilis, or this strong, sturdy, farmer's 

 boy of a great blue lobelia. This flower has a re- 



