EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 9 
unopened blossoms showed sharp edges like beech- 
nuts. Above them glowed square fringed flowers of 
the richest, deepest blue that nature holds. It is 
bluer than the bluebird’s back, and fades the violet, 
the aster, the great lobelia, and all the other blue 
flowers that grow. The four petals were fringed, and 
the flower seemed like a blue eye looking out of 
long lashes to the paler sky above. The calyx inside 
was of a veined purple or a silver-white, while four 
gold-tipped, light purple stamens clustered around 
a canary-yellow pistil.. That morning I wore on the 
train one of the two flowers which I allowed myself 
to pick. Every friend I met spoke of it admiringly. 
Some had heard of it, others had seen it for them- 
selves in places far distant. None of them knew that 
every day until frost they would pass unheedingly 
within ten feet of nearly thirty of these flowers. 
Sometimes the adventure, unlike good children, 
is to be heard, not seen. It was the end of a hot 
August day. I had been down for a late dip in the 
lake, and was coming back through the woods to 
the old farmhouse where I have spent so many of 
my summers. The path wound through a grove of 
slim birches, and the lights in the afterglow were all 
green and gold and white. From the nearby road a 
field sparrow, with a pink beak, sang his silver flute 
song; and I stopped to listen, and thought to myself, 
if he were only as rare as the nightingale, how people 
would crowd to hear him. 
Suddenly from the depths of the twilight woods a 
thrush song began. At first I thought the singer was 
