A FRINGED GENTIAN 



There is nothing so fine to Jack and Jill 

 As a natural fluid that runs down hill, 

 And the loveliest lyric man ever heard 

 Was not lyric at all, but what he inferred. 



&quot; It seems to me,&quot; I ventured to say, &quot; that 

 you are trying to play the part of Peter Bell, and 

 it does not become you.&quot; 



&quot; You utterly mistake me. I am only insisting 

 that the sane man shall accept the facts of Nature 

 while he exercises his imagination in using her 

 for his own purposes. She is stuffed full of facts 

 as well as symbols, but they do not always corrob 

 orate his desires. Wait a moment I am going 

 down in that meadow to look for an autumnal 

 fact.&quot; 



Then off he started, and I saw him poking 

 about among the grasses, sometimes almost lost 

 to view, evidently looking for something with 

 great earnestness. 



Left alone I wondered if Griselle would enjoy 

 this scene. It really seemed to me that her pres 

 ence would in some way banish the incomplete 

 ness. I was curious to know how she would regard 

 it. Would she, like so many women I had met, 

 pretend to enjoy it because I did ? I could not 

 rid myself of the notion that she would fit into 

 it and interpret it unconsciously. 



I heard the Doctor shouting to me as he held 

 up something that looked like a bunch of grass. 

 When he came back, he handed me three or four 

 stems about eighteen inches long of the fringed 

 gentian, each stem having upon its curved branches 



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