284 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



winter months. Its big leaves take up a lot of room 

 in the summer, and then we listen rather easily to the 

 sneers of the cultured against its ungainliness. The 

 hollyhocks come up without our care and in spite of 

 our disapproval, and then in August they recapture 

 our hearts just so much as to make us say that we 

 are not sorry they have come. As a matter of fact, 

 if we can love them it makes us feel young, and that 

 is everything. But we know those who perceive 

 their own love for the hollyhock, for whom the horti- 

 culturist produces new varieties every year, and who 

 make of its tall masts not merely the essential finish- 

 ing-touch, but one of the most beautiful features of 

 the autumn garden. 



The sunflower has not been so much cultivated, 

 though, judging from what has happened to the 

 hieraciums of the same natural order, there may be 

 triumphs in store. The butterfly-lover cannot be 

 without the sunflower, whose jolly round face is the 

 rendezvous of all the autumn beauties that fly. It 

 is not complete without a pair of red admirals winking 

 their broad wings upon it, while an envious humble- 

 bee and some drone-flies wait impatiently in the air 

 for their roomy magnificences to go off elsewhere. 

 For frank handsomeness you need not go beyond 

 the red admiral, but the pentstemon has a guest 

 whose visits are far more precious. We do not see 

 it come, so rapid is its flight, but we suddenly see it 

 poised before the flower on wings that move so 

 rapidly that they are invisible. There is the speed 

 of a bullet stored in those wings, but the insect 

 manages to let out so much only as to advance it 

 or withdraw it a mere tenth of an inch, so that it is 



