1 98 IN SUMMER. 



therefore, to trust only to past experience, and, if 

 you ramble at all during the dog-days, consider 

 yourself in the tropics and act accordingly. 

 Seek the shady nooks, and rest content to con- 

 template that which is nearest at hand. He has 

 traveled much who spends an hour in the woods. 

 The glamour of mystery rests as a veil over every 

 tree and shrub, and who has yet shown why the 

 wayside weeds are all so brilliant and beautiful? 

 Where, except the damp shades of night, no 

 cooling shadows ever fall, even the well-traveled 

 highway is now resplendent with St.-John's-wort, 

 or white as with a snow-drift, where the blooming 

 yarrow clusters ; but the pitiless sun threatens 

 the rambler here, and I turn to the little forest 

 of sumach and locust which now nearly obliter- 

 ates the boundaries of a long-neglected pasture. 

 Everywhere is outspread the luxuriance of the 

 tropics. Acres of lilies, ruddy and golden, set 

 in a cloud of tall meadow-rue ; and this wealth 

 of gorgeous bloom upon which the eyes might 

 feast the summer long, is hedged by a glossy 

 thicket of smilax, broken here and there only to 

 give place to a no less rank growth of pink roses. 

 My neighbors hold the place a disgrace to its own- 

 er, but I have long since cut the word " weed " 

 from my vocabulary. 



In midsummer, it is too much like cataloguing 

 to scan over-closely one's surroundings. Gen- 



