380 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



ing innocence into an autumn world recall Hans 

 Andersen's pathetic story of the " Sommer Gowk." 

 It is the Danish popular name for the snowdrop 

 " the summer-fool " cheated by false hopes of 

 summer into the clutches of present winter. The 

 "Sommer Gowk" is chilled and beaten down 

 by a shower of sleet, and gets hardly a glimpse 

 of sunshine, and no summer at all. And yet in 

 the South, " over the hills and far away," summer 

 is filling all the fields with sunshine summer 

 fair and real and drawing nearer day by day. 

 The " Sommer Gowk," says Andersen, is like the 

 noble souls born into a world as yet unfit to re- 

 ceive them. The prophets who gave their high 

 spiritual message to ears dulled by sensuality or 

 sloth, the poets who had no recognition save from 

 posterity, the reformers, persecuted or laughed at 

 by their own age, but honored by a later one 

 were they not Sommer Gowks, one and all? And 

 science, too, has had its Sommer Gowks, for all 

 its great schemes, from the discovery of America 

 to serial navigation, have seemed dreams in their 

 day. 



But " the world's dreamers have been its bene- 

 factors." And so in the November violets we may 

 see a reminder of those who, in dark days and in 



