A Window in Arcady 
July 5. —Of a hot July afternoon, when the air is 
drowsy with the hum of bees, and when the far-off shout¬ 
ing and the tumult of the swimmers down the creek sound 
a lullaby in the ear, one’s rambles are preferably confined 
to earth’s shady places. Along the wood’s edge, which 
casts upon the field a grateful shadow lengthening with 
the afternoon, there is, these summer days, entertainment 
for man and beast—for besides my own intellectual brows¬ 
ings my dog will be busy as a bee on all sorts of wild 
goose chases. There are, for instance, certain profligate 
birds that must be barked at—marauders with beaks deep- 
dyed with cherry and mulberry juice, and flirting their 
impudent little tails just out of reach; there will be 
Mollie Cottontail that must be chased into the brier 
patch; there will be sundry holes in the earth to be bur¬ 
rowed into in the hope of a woodchuck or a mole supper. 
As, for myself, here are the queer little panicled flowers 
of the figwort staring me full in the face, like so many 
aeriel rabbits of Lilliput, with expectant ears straight up. 
Here, too, are the low bushes of the New Jersey tea, of 
patriotic memory, from the leaves of which shrub the cup 
that cheers but not inebriates was often brewed when 
King George was odiously taxing our ancestors’ bohea. 
I like to look close at the dainty clusters of white flowers 
of which each tiny petal is hooded—a very fairy bonnet. 
By the wood’s edge, too, particularly on the side of 
a bank, one of the prettiest of small ferns grows, slim 
and straight as an arrow, its tiny leaflets alertly looking 
this way and that; and if ever a fern had a mission to 
preach uprightness in the earth, this is that fern. It and 
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