The Bay of he Band 
longer asking leave, but claiming for her own the 
pastures, gardens, waysides, even the dumps and 
waste places. 
Yonder where the cattle feed stands the barbed 
purple thistle, arrogant, royal, unapproachable by 
man or beast. “Stand back,” it says, by every one 
of its thousand nettles; “this field is mine.” How 
savage and how splendid it is! After the royal pur- 
ple fades, the goldfinches will dare to come and eat 
the plumed seeds and scatter them by the million, 
but even the goldfinch has been known to perish 
upon the poisoned spikes with which the plant is 
armed. 
As persistent and successful as the thistle, though 
not as arrogant and savage, grows the wild white 
carrot in the mowing fields. The courts have called 
it names and set a price upon its life. It has been 
pulled out, cut off and burned, — exterminated again 
and again by statute. 
Life snaps her fingers at us in July; lays hold of 
us, even, aS we pass, and makes us carry her burs 
and beggar’s-ticks for a wider planting. I am as 
useful as the tail of my cow. Neither the cow nor 
I ever come home from the July fields without an 
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