chapter III 



N Tennessee, August is the 

 ragged month, especially 

 towards the end. Pas- 

 tures, in the main, are bare 

 and sun-baked ; the yel- 

 lowed corn blades have 

 begun to whip and tatter. 

 If grasshoppers are plenty 

 they eat the high corn-blades to the midrib 

 while still they are green. In fields so eaten 

 the whipping sounds like a battle of willow 

 wands. Gardens lie waste and weedy, except 

 in the late cabbage plots, and the sweet potato 

 patches. But in the flower borders there is a 

 fine riot of red and yellow, and pink and purple, 

 with now and then a blotch of white. 



Verbenas, petunias, phlox, geraniums, nas- 

 turtiums, are, each and several, the real sun- 

 flowers. The sun never shines too white-hot 

 for them. They live but to meet such shin- 

 ing, and stretch out stems almost fabulously 



