226 In Touch with Nature. 



paints with fast colors, and the dust is in our own 

 eyes. When the orchard bends with an over- 

 crop, as now, who stops to admire the flushed 

 cheeks of a single apple ? But in years of scarcity, 

 the single beauties are perched upon mantel- 

 pieces as too valuable for the dumpling, where 

 they really show to best advantage. 



I have this day witnessed the first scene of the 

 last act of summer ; and if the bank whereon the 

 wild thyme blows could hold the gaze of Shake- 

 speare, how he would have lingered over a way-side 

 pond this morning, flecked with white water-lilies 

 and hemmed by the tall scarlet spires of lobelia ! 

 Never shone the sun more brightly ; earth and air 

 were flooded with its penetrating rays. Nothing 

 was hidden, not even a blade of grass but stood 

 bravely forth, as if conscious of its beauty. It is 

 a crystalline day, when we have insight in a literal 

 sense, and not merely the dim outlines of the ex- 

 ternal world ; a day when Nature draws the veil 

 and you are brought face to face with beauty. A 

 pool becomes now something more than a hollow 

 in the ground, decked with lilies and lobelia ; but 

 if it were not more than this, there would still be 



