148 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



favorite resting place. My morning is speeding 

 by on the wings of the wind. The water is 

 rippling merrily in the brooklet below and the 

 shadows and sunbeams are playing checkers on 

 the valley floor before me. No sigh doth rise 

 for the unfinished deeds of dead yesterday; no 

 plans have I for the doing in the hours of the 

 unborn to-morrow. Yet he who sighs never for 

 the moments lost, who plans not for future 

 days which may never be, he who is ever con- 

 tent, amounts to but little here on earth and his 

 going shall be forgotten as are the hues and the 

 odors of the wild rose that bloomed but yester- 

 day. 



While I do not own these woods I can sit 

 here and enjoy them to the utmost. In the days 

 that have gone by I have gathered from them 

 an unearned increment of delight. Lowly ob- 

 jects manifold have come within my ken Even 

 as I write there peers up at me from over the 

 brink of the bluff a clump of wild hydrangea 

 which is just entering the full tide of its bloom- 

 ing period. The neutral ray flowers of the flat 

 topped cymes are opening wide their white 

 petals that the unattractive fertile ones of the 

 center may be visited by pollen-carrying in- 

 sects. Those ray flowers cannot perpetuate 

 themselves. They create not new seeds for fu- 

 ture life yet they have a duty to perform. 

 Though in a month from now they will hang 



