THE AUGUST FIELDS. 103 
When a ray of sunlight strays in upon it, the wondrous 
creature seems to hover on the stalk, ready to take 
flight, like some lost tropic bird. There is a spot 
whence I have in ten minutes brought away as many as 
I could hold in both arms, some bearing fifty blossoms 
ona single stalk; and I could not believe that there 
was such another mass of color in the world.” It fills 
in the August landscape the place of the rhodora in 
May, the mountain laurel in June and the water lily in 
July. Among the pictures that hang on the walls of 
my memory are some of a little pool, around the margin 
of which was a thick fringe of the cardinal flower, while 
in the waters the bright reflection seemed to double its 
beauty. When the meadows have been deprived of 
their wealth of grasses, and the nymphs of the brooks 
have hidden their faces from the heat of the August 
sun, and the distant hills are clothed with a hazy light, 
then we look for its coming and not in vain. 
