230 In Touch with Nature. 



asters of regal mould, and a host of lesser lights 

 that make good the claim that Nature's palette 

 was not used up in painting the June landscape. 

 To be surfeited with flowers is a weakness against 

 which to guard ; rather, they should be that joy 

 forever which Keats immortalized. Surely it is a 

 red-letter day when we greet the fringed gentian. 

 Where autumn flowers bloom there, too, will be 

 music. Merit never lacks good company. The 

 singing-bird may have drifted from exultation to 

 meditation ; from May to September is a long 

 journey, if we have been awake to the world as 

 it was passing; so, too, with the birds. Their 

 holiday has come, and they have desire to fritter 

 it away. Perhaps they are planning for the year 

 to come ; perhaps for their migratorial flight ; but 

 no sweetness has been lost. We have it in the 

 books that the birds cease to sing when the sum- 

 mer is over, as if they mourned the separation, 

 the severing of family ties. It is not true. The 

 young follow their parents, and the parents remain 

 mated. Because we cannot see how this can be, 

 how natural to deny it ! but every returning spring 

 proves it nevertheless. Autumn bird-songs are 



