52 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
and snow-like, and a Maple half way up a 
sheltered hillside, one mass of canary-color, its 
fallen leaves making an apparent reflection on 
the earth at its foot, —and then a real reflec- 
tion, fused into a glassy light intenser than 
itself, upon the smooth, dark stream below. 
The beautiful disrobing suggested the persist- 
ent and unconquerable delicacy of Nature, who 
shrinks from nakedness and is always seeking 
to veil her graceful boughs, — if not with leaves, 
then with feathery hoar-frost, ermined snow, or 
transparent icy armor. 
After all, the fascination of summer lies not in 
any details, however perfect, but in the sense of 
total wealth that summer gives. Wholly to en- 
joy this, one must give one’s self passively to it, 
and not expect to reproduce it in words. We 
strive to picture heaven, when we are barely at 
the threshold of the inconceivable beauty of 
earth. Perhaps the truant boy who simply 
bathes himself in the lake and then basks in the 
sunshine, dimly conscious of the exquisite love- 
liness around him, is wiser, because humbler, 
than is he who with presumptuous phrases tries 
to utter it. There are moments when the atmos- 
phere is so surcharged with luxury that every 
pore of the body becomes an ample gate for 
sensation to flow in, and one has simply to sit 
still and be filled. In after years the memory 
