(spiderwort). They and I were old friends, though I had never known 

 them in such profusion, for they stood for two miles and more in solid 

 ranks on both sides the track. You do not know how beautiful the blue 

 flag is till you have seen it in such long procession. Standing alone, 

 this flower has a gawky appearance, and when seen in small groups this 

 awkwardness is not materially lessened ; but when seen in their armies, 

 where on looking back they drift like blue smoke lying low along the 

 ground and for miles then they are a pageant of beauty and color. I 

 gathered them till I could carry no more, but gathered them all in my 

 heart. Not a blue flag nodded on its stem when my love had passed 

 by. I see the mass of color and delight as I write, as I did the day I 

 walked in the midst as if I were crowned king of all that excellence; 

 and 1 mistake, if for all the days of my life I shall not feel as if on a 

 day in June I had walked in a royal procession. To see that blue 

 muster in the early summer was worth going mile on mile to see. The 

 violets had put their lights out weeks ago, and here is a flower that 

 holds its bloom aloft like clustered stars of blue, as if violets clustered 

 on the umbels. You must keep close to the ground to see a violet; 

 but these flowers hang their blue aloft like a light and there, shines blue 

 as the midoceans. There they stand, sometimes like soldiers in ranks 

 ready for war, sometimes they spring suddenly out of the dense green 

 of the swamp grass I have told you of, and you see no stalk of flower 

 at all, only a green sea waking from sleep into amethyst with downy 

 centers blue as the petals are and each pistil dipped in a pot of gold dust. 



One thing I found this day I had never found before, and that was a 

 pure white flag with snow-white center and the pistil tipped with gold. 

 The beauty of it fairly took my breath. That day I had seen flags of 

 every hue of blue, from light sky blue to the black blue of ocean, and 

 some with only a haze of blue, faint, delicate, remote as if the color 

 were an afterthought; but this blue flag blooming cloud- white was quite 

 beyond me. So is God always and still always surprising us. 



But down the track behind me I see a cloud of smoke. My holi- 

 day I plainly see is ended. My train is coming and is no laggard. I 

 must leave this long journey of gladness, though loath as ever sailor to 

 quit the sea. I have had a journey in the land of dreams, so fair they 

 were. I had walked down a five-mile stretch of railroad, and it had 

 been as if I had wandered inland across the hills of God. 



136 



