The Bluegrass Claims Its Own 



time from early June to late November, 

 and I will show you a matted mass, as 

 luxuriant a sod as central Kentucky it- 

 self may boast. And speaking of this, 

 for the benefit of all who love the sight 

 and the touch of a bluegrass sward and 

 yet know not the existence of this liter- 

 ary gem, let us here interpolate a classic: 



Next in importance to the divine profusion 

 of water, light and air, those three physical 

 facts which render existence possible, may be 

 reckoned the universal beneficence of grass. 

 Lying in the sunshine among the buttercups 

 and dandelions of May, scarcely higher in 

 intelligence than those minute tenants of that 

 mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are 

 of grass; and when the fitful fever is ended, 

 and the foolish wrangle of the market and 

 forum is closed, grass heals over the scar which 

 our descent into the bosom of the earth has 

 made, and the carpet of the infant becomes 

 the blanket of the dead. 



Grass is the forgiveness of Nature — her 

 constant benediction. Fields trampled with 

 battle, saturated with blood, torn with the 

 ruts of cannon, grow green again with grass, 

 and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned 



[47] 



