STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



What is the aftermath which the poet gleans in 

 his neighbor's field? 



"A second crop thy acres yield, 

 Which I gather in a song," 



sings Emerson. That is a poor and lifeless botany 

 that is not written full with songs. 



Chaucer's daisy was his favored companion; his 

 devotion was unremitting. He met its opening 

 fringes at the dawn ; he lingered by it as it closed 

 its eye at twilight. Sleeping or waking, noon or 

 midnight, he could give an account of his protegee for 

 every hour. How few of the proud followers, of Lin- 

 naeus know how their erudition is mocked in 

 the meadow masquerade, or what their 

 hard -named minions are up to in 

 the dark hours ! 



My first midnight walk was a 

 revelation, and a severe shock to 

 my comfortable self-conceit. The 

 woods and meadows had been full of 

 faces that I had known and welcomed famil- 

 iarly for years in my daily walks. But when 

 I sallied forth with my lantern that night, I 

 stepped from my threshold upon foreign 

 sod. I found no greeting nor open 

 palms, and I lost my way as though in 

 a strange land. Indeed "is not the mid- 

 night like Central Africa to most of us ?" 



As I stood in perplexity scanning my sur- 

 roundings in the meadow a strange form closely 

 hooded beneath its folded leaves seemed to mur- 

 mur at my elbow, and I listened. 

 "Say not that you know a single one of us," it 

 said, in a roguish clover-scented whisper. " It is not 



