WHILE AUTUMN LINGERS 



NOW the sunflowers great and small have assembled 

 for their annual home-coming at the gates of Sep- 

 tember. As the passing of summer was marked on the 

 almanac of yesterday, it seemed as if the morning would 

 discover a flitting of flowers over night, and that the gar- 

 den would look deserted and bare, but again the clans of 

 the helianthus have trooped to the rescue. From an 

 upper window where one can look afar you may see them 

 coming on the margins of dusty highways, in grassy lanes, 

 across the fields, nodding their pretty heads and keeping 

 tryst with autumn. Their sunshine gladdens the for- 

 gotten wastes, it lights the tapers of the goldenrod, and 

 gives an alluring sheen to the purple distance. 



If, like Puck, we could girdle the earth in the twink- 

 ling of an eye, it should be done this day by passing the 

 greetings from one sunflower to another from the reef of 

 Norman's Woe, following the New England highways, 

 the National Pike, and the Santa Fe Trail westward 

 through the mountain passes, to the last yellow bouquet 

 on the edge of the desert. The clew should be caught 

 again in the Sierras, until the trail led to blossoms 



