A Window in Arcady 
small flowers of a deep magenta color, and a purplish, 
sticky fuzz that clothes the whole plant makes it very 
disagreeable to handle. The odd feature of the cuphea, 
and one which any one may observe, is the way it ripens its 
seeds. The capsule, instead of staying fast shut until the 
seeds are mature and ready for sowing, splits open while 
they are still green, and, exposed to the elements in this 
Spartan fashion, they grow to ripeness. 
If we have ever wondered why cockle-burrs and Spanish 
needles and beggarticks and all that vagrant fraternity of 
stick-tights that pester us in the fall are so widely dis¬ 
tributed in the earth we shall do well to notice the cows 
of an autumn evening as they come home from a day’s 
foraging in some weedy pasture. Their hides are often 
stuck as full of them as pincushions with pins. Rubbing 
off in stall and barnyard, the seeds eventually become a 
part of the compost heap, which in due time may be 
shipped scores of miles away to fertilize fields in another 
State, and, the seeds germinating there, their progeny will 
by another fall be at the old tricks of the family—stealing 
rides on folk and cattle. 
October 28. —That man must be a hardened citizen, 
indeed, who on a fine October morning does not feel the 
country tugging at his heart-strings and inviting him to 
take a day off and go nutting. For now is the delectable 
time of year when nuts are dropping, when “the frost is 
on the pumpkin and the corn is in the shock,” and the 
air is spicy with the fragrance of the cider press; when 
quail and rabbits scurry about at their plumpest, blissfully 
ignorant of the nearness of the fateful First of November; 
[ 108 ] 
