156 THE PASSING OF SUMMER 



from the drier margins and banks. These modest 

 members of the Orchid family were blossoming in 

 June, encouraged by the warm dampness of un- 

 frequented swamps. But in the marshy hollows and 

 the drier soil of suburban ravines they choose a later 

 season. The delicate white of their long, compact, and 

 twisted spikes of flowers and the dainty perfume that 

 is often lost in the blending of marsh odours give this 

 flower a place among the favourites of advancing 

 summer. 



Blotches of white show where the Turtle-head is 

 rising among the marsh grass. The lips of this flower 

 always wear a broad smile, so quiet and complacent 

 as to be positively irritating. There is a complacency 

 that comes with a universal sympathy and under- 

 standing, with a perception of the beneficent relation- 

 ship of all things mundane, a complacency that bears 

 the bawling and the din, that walks calmly in the 

 midst of disputations, that admits all philosophies. 

 This is the complacency that sees one grand perfec- 

 tion in the myriad seeming antagonisms confusing 

 and distracting the short-sighted — ^that waits on the 

 working out of the law of existence a year, a century, a 

 hundred centuries. It is manifested in the seer whose 

 creed ** invites no one, promises nothing, sits in 

 calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows 

 no discouragement." 



There is also the complacency of the narrowly 



