VII 

 AUGUST DAYS 



ONE of our well-known poets, in personifying 

 August, represents her as coming with daisies 

 in her hair. But an August daisy is a sorry affair; 

 it is little more than an empty, or partly empty, 

 seed-vessel. In the Northern States the daisy is 

 in her girlhood and maidenhood in June; she be- 

 comes very matronly early in July, — fat, faded, 

 prosaic, — and by or before August she is practi- 

 cally defunct. I recall no flower whose career is more 

 typical of the life, say, of the average European 

 peasant woman, or of the women of barbarous 

 tribes, its grace and youthfulness pass so quickly 

 into stoutness, obesity, and withered old age. How 

 positively girlish and taking is the daisy during the 

 first few days of its blooming, while its snow- 

 white rays yet stand straight up and shield its ten- 

 der centre somewhat as a hood shields a girl's face! 

 Presently it becomes a perfect disk and bares its 

 face to the sun; this is the stage of its young 

 womanhood. Then its yellow centre — its body — 

 begins to swell and become gross, the rays slowly 

 turn brown, and finally wither up and drop. It is a 



201 



