250 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Flags in 
sunlight. 
Beauty of 
the com- 
monplace. 
spectrum. And again, under the morning sun, 
with the wind blowing over them, I have seen 
them glitter and throw light from their polished 
surfaces like the bayonets of a regiment on pa- 
rade. And still again in mid-winter I have seen 
these same commonplace flags standing yellow 
as gold above the snows, with every stem cast- 
ing a bright blue shadow, and the whole scene 
of marsh, sky, and snow showing a perfect col- 
or-harmony in yellow, blue, and white. 
Indeed, there are many beauties that adorn 
these marshes unseen by the man who wades 
across them shod with rubber boots and carry- 
ing agun in his hand. There is something 
quite as beautiful as wild fowl to be seen from 
the sunken “blind” on the point of land. 
The play of light on the flat mud near the 
water, the scarlet sky reflection on the little 
wares, the amethystine hue mace by a flaw of 
wind rippling the surface of the bay, the splen- 
dor of the sky, the radiance of the white clouds, 
are all incomparably fine. Looking backward, 
the rushes of the marsh extend for miles in one 
great sweep of color, till they meet the woods, 
and beyond and above the dark woodland mass 
stretches another sweep of deep bluesky. There 
never was a simpler or a nobler landscape. 
