Of His Good Pleasure 1 95 



casionally be found, and the eagle fern, &quot; hoss 

 brake,&quot; the Yankee name is, is quite frequently 

 green and stout. The cinnamon and the clayton 

 ferns are gone by, and so too the ostrich fern, and 

 many another. But now is the bravery shown of 

 the marginal, the spinulose, the Christmas and 

 the crested ferns, the fine sisterhood of the as- 

 pidiums, which love to dwell together, knowing 

 their kindred. Now all the lesser shrubs, the vi 

 burnums, the cornels, the blueberry family, are 

 thronging the wood paths with exquisite variations 

 of colour, scarlet, crimson, mulberry and tints 

 that have no colour names ; while beneath them 

 blanching ferns, and lilac cohosh, and purplish 

 cranesbill, over the fallen leaves, adorn the ground 

 work of the great scheme. 



Out in the open fields, by the roadsides and 

 over the highways the maples have filled the com 

 mon earth with cloth of gold, a more truly pre 

 cious gold than that of the commercial medium 

 over which nations fight and men surrender their 

 immortal lives. What words can express the glory 

 of looking up into the royal branches of a sugar 

 maple, catching its golden glow in the reflected 

 light of the leaves which have ripened and fallen ! 

 Indeed, what are words to interpret such magnifi 

 cence of growth and such splendour of bloom ? 

 We can but be quiet, and admire and worship. 



