36 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE CHAP. 
“ But indeed there are days,’ says Emer- 
son, ‘‘ which occur in this climate, at almost 
any season of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection, when the air, the 
heavenly bodies, and the earth make a har- 
mony, as if nature would indulge her off- 
spring. ... These halcyon days may be 
looked for with a little more assurance in 
that pure October weather, which we distin- 
guish by the name of the Indian summer. 
The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the 
broad hills and warm wide fields. To have 
lived through all its sunny hours, seems 
longevity enough.” Yet does not the very 
name of Indian summer imply the superi- 
ority of the summer itself, —the real, the 
true summer, ‘ when the young corn is burst- 
ing into ear; the awned heads of rye, wheat, 
and barley, and the nodding panicles of oats, 
shoot from their green and glaucous stems, in 
broad, level, and waving expanses of present 
beauty and future promise. The very waters 
are strewn with flowers: the buck-bean, the 
‘water-violet, the elegant flowering rush, and 
the queen of the waters, the pure and splendid 
