Boulder Reveries. 



"You only need to make a faithful record of an 

 average summer day's experience and summer mood, 

 and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back 

 to more than that summer day alone could show. 

 Only the rarest flower, the purest melody of the sea- 

 son, thus comes down to us." Thoreau. 



I. 



Aug. 28, '98. To-day that great inverted 

 bowl, whose rim on every side comes down to 

 meet the earth, is blue blue without a tinge 

 of white or gray. I am seated on a grassy slope 

 in an old woods-pasture. No sound of human 

 voice or human device breaks upon my senses. 

 Trees, those highest and noblest forms of mute 

 vegetable life, surround and shelter me. I rest 

 beneath a sugar maple. Another maple and a 

 blue ash are on my right. A black oak, tall and 

 slender-bodied, rises in front ; while on my left 

 a sturdy white oak the rings of a century 

 within its bole out-tops them all. 



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