AUGUST DAYS 



gilled mushroom, —an infusion of indigo in its cells. 

 How forbidding it looks! Yesterday in the Au^^^ust 

 woods I saw a tiny mushroom like a fairy parasol of 

 a Japanese type, — its top delicately fluted. 



During the steaming, dripping, murky, and 

 muggy dog-days that sometimes come the latter 

 half of August, how this fungus growth runs riot in 

 the woods and in the fields too, — a kind of sacri- 

 legious vegetation mocking Nature's saner and more 

 wholesome handiwork, — the flowers of death, 

 vegetable spectres. 



August days are for the most part tranquil days; 

 the fret and hurry of the season are over. We are on 

 the threshold of autumn. Nature dreams and med- 

 itates; her veins no longer thrill with the eager, 

 frenzied sap ; she ripens and hardens her growths ; 

 she concentrates; she begins to make ready for 

 winter. The buds for next year are formed during 

 this month, and her nuts and seeds and bulbs finish 

 storing up food for the future plant. 



From my outlook upon the Hudson the days are 

 placid, the river is placid, the boughs of the tree? 

 gently wag, the bees make vanishing-lines through 

 the air. The passing boats create a great commotion 

 in the water, converting it from a cool, smooth, 

 shadowy surface to one pulsing and agitated. The 

 pulsations go shoreward in long, dark, rolling, glassy 

 swells. The grapes are purpling in the vineyard ; 

 the apples and pears are coloring in the orchard ; 



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