156 THE PASSING OF SUMMER 
from the drier margins and banks. These modest 
members of the Orchid family were blossoming in 
June, encouraged by the warm dampness of un- 
frequented swamps. But in the marshy hollows and 
the drier soil of suburban ravines they choose a later 
season. The delicate white of their long, compact, and 
twisted spikes of flowers and the dainty perfume that 
is often lost in the blending of marsh odours give this 
flower a place among the favourites of advancing 
summer. 
Blotches of white show where the Turtle-head is 
rising among the marsh grass. The lips of this flower 
always wear a broad smile, so quiet and complacent 
as to be positively irritating. There is a complacency 
that comes with a universal sympathy and under- 
standing, with a perception of the beneficent relation- 
ship of all things mundane, a complacency that bears 
the bawling and the din, that walks calmly in the 
midst of disputations, that admits all philosophies. 
This is the complacency that sees one grand perfec- 
tion in the myriad seeming antagonisms confusing 
and distracting the short-sighted — that waits on the 
working out of the law of existence a year, a century, a 
hundred centuries. It is manifested in the seer whose 
creed ** invites no one, promises nothing, sits in 
calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows 
no discouragement.” 
There is also the complacency of the narrowly 
