24 COMING OUT. 



books of new actors of fair new flowers, not of the garden 

 or the wild, but of the world, 



" With eyes 

 That mock the hazel-nut and shame the violet." 



Last, not least, in eyes like these, are the fashions, " coming 

 out" for summer "with the butterflies," a phrase which 

 brings us back to the sweet natural, and gives occasion to 

 look more closely than our wont into some of those expansive 

 processes by which the youthful flutterers of summer are 

 " finished" for their "coming out" in the gay assemblies of 

 the insect world. 



Now day by day do the garlands which adorn their verdant 

 ball-rooms grow thicker with opening flowers, and together 

 with these, and, emerging in numbers nicely proportioned, do 



" Throngs of insects in the shade 

 Try their thin wings, and dance in the warm "beams 

 That waked them into life." 



We are thus reminded, at every step, that flower, leaf, and 

 insect, were intended for each other ; a fact already noticed, 

 together with various other analogies between their respective 

 " comings out." 



It is no easy matter, watch it as we may, to see a flower in 

 the act of blowing bursting forth from the confining calyx; 

 nor is it much less difficult (out of doors) to catch an insect in 

 the act of emergement from the trammels of its chrysalis 

 estate. It needs, however, but small pains and patience, 



