1 66 IValks in New England 



when we depart from this habitude, and enter 

 into that infinite realm where all the glad souls 

 be. 



Now the nuts are ripening in their wraps, the 

 hazels by the roadside and in field, the chestnuts 

 in their burrs, the butternuts in their Nessus gar 

 ments and the walnuts in their mathematical 

 boxes. It is the charted time of all the asters ; 

 every aster has a name, thanks to the botanists, 

 but let us know them simply as asters, a simple, 

 earnest kindly class of folk, who do their best to 

 make life happy, for themselves, of course, but 

 as it happens, for men and women and children, 

 just as the golden-rods do. 



The sunflowers are busy, and the burr-mari 

 golds ; and the various lettuces, especially those 

 of the prenanthes group, are making their bits of 

 the world beautiful. Now the fringed gentian is 

 to be found, and as well that recluse, the brilliantly 

 blue closed gentian, and the snake-head or turtle- 

 head is abundant beside water courses. The 

 great tribe of polygonaceae are riotous over all 

 manner of places, and prettiest of all is the dainty 

 pink-white polygonella on dry fields. In the 

 purples of the fall, besides the few lespedezas, the 

 desmodiums, the wildbeans and the ground nuts, 

 there are the stern darkness of the vernonia and 

 the bright splendour of the liatris to keep up the 



