AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE 



his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as 

 my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of 

 the mountain, he began that sweeping spiral move- 

 ment in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he 

 went, without once breaking his majestic poise, till 

 he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, 

 when he bent his course thitherward and gradually 

 vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of 

 large ideas; he embraces long distances; the conti- 

 nent is his home. I never look upon one without 

 emotion ; I follow him with my eye as long as I 

 can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of 

 the Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding 

 seacoast. The waters are his, and the woods and 

 the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil 

 of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and 

 vast spaces. 



We go out of our way to touch at a spring run 

 in the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a 

 single scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems al- 

 most to light up the gloom with its intense bit of 

 color. Beside a ditch in a field beyond, we find the 

 great blue lobelia, and near it, amid the weeds and 

 wild grasses and purple asters, the most beautiful of 

 our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. What a rare 

 and delicate, almost aristocratic look the gentian 

 has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings ! It does 

 not lure the bee, but it lures and holds every pass- 

 ing human eye. If we strike through the corner of 

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