IV 



The Stolen Moccasins 



Woodlands, green and gay with dew, 

 Here, to-day, I pledge anew 

 All the love I gave to you. 



AucE Gary, A Lesson. 



WHETHER the season is premature or 

 backward, the Moccasin-Flowers always 

 appear at the same date, along with the 

 Painted and Crimson Trilliums, in the 

 warm Glen of Comus. I am sure of finding these 

 flowers unfolding, the week previous to Decoration 

 Day, from the 20th to the 28th of May. 



On the 30th of May, four days after I had discovered 

 the famous two hundred Pink Moccasin buds on the 

 hillside above the Glen of Comus, I imagined now 

 that they must be in full array, w^earing the rich hues 

 of magenta and all the delicate tints of green, white, 

 and pink. When once fully unfolded they change 

 color very rapidly. Late in the afternoon I entered 

 the edge of the Swamp of Oracles in District Fourteen, 

 north of the schoolhouse. My hound w^as my sole 

 companion, and I heard him in the distance making 

 friends with children, whose voices came echoing from 

 the direction of my fairy-land of Moccasins. A fore- 



44 



