WHILE AUTUMN LINGERS 155 



marshes suggest melancholy days to come. The flower 

 hunter has treasures of color in the groves and open 

 country ready for the plucking. 



All seem to come at once when the sunflowers make 

 their home-coming. It is a celebration of beauty in the 

 garden among the gentle plants, and a field day where 

 the upland asters and tramp sunflowers seem to chat of 

 helianthus cucumerifolius, content to live in gardens 

 while its perennial relatives seek the highways. 



Autumn lingers far away when the summer hours are 

 stealing along and "a light of laughing flowers across the 

 grass is spread." Then there comes a brilliant day vibrant 

 with luxurious warmth and languor. At sunset long level 

 bars of purple stretch across the crimson west, mountains 

 of vapor are heaped on the northern horizon, and flashes 

 of lightning play upon the snowy summits, while to the 

 south the ragged fragments of storm clouds scud away 

 from an aftermath of a distant hurricane, and, from the 

 courts where the sun sets burning red, float long pennants 

 of violet mist streaming across the sapphire skies to the 

 infinite reaches of the zenith. 



Morn dawns after a night when the winds blow east 

 and then blow west, and the earliest breeze brings an 

 arctic breath; the fragrance of northern pine forests 

 comes in at the window, and we awake to the presence of 

 autumn. The quality of sunshine has changed to a mel- 

 lower light, and the fervid heat has been tempered and 



