THE MID-JUNE FLOWERS. 
Happy, truly, is the naturalist. He has no time for melancholy dreams. 
The earth becomes to him transparent; everywhere he sees significancies, 
harmonies, laws, chains of cause and effect endlessly interlinked, which 
draw him out of the narrow sphere of self-interest and self-pleasing, into 
a pure and wholesome region of solemn joy and wonder. 
— KINGSLEY — Glaucus. 
The mid-June grasses, tall and lush, used to bend over 
a brook, a wonderful brook it seemed to be then, 
which came from somewhere beyond the low hills 
which formed the Ultima Thule of the boys’ world, and 
flowed through the wide meadow to join the great 
river. There was a current rumor among the boys that 
the river flowed into the ocean somewhere, but none of 
them had seen the ocean. A section of the brook 
and a section of the river formed in summer a large 
part of their little world, and they did not trouble 
themselves about the mysteries of the source of the 
one or the remote course of the other. It was sufficient 
for them that the meadow and the brook and the river 
were overflowing with a life like their own. They 
