AN OCTOBER DAY 
i3 
And Emerson’s lines are always to be remem¬ 
bered: 
“Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk ? 
At rich men’s tables eaten bread and pulse ? 
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ? 
And loved so well a high behavior, 
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained. 
Nobility more nobly to repay ? 
Oh, be my friend and teach me to be thine !’* 
The closed gentian is more common and may 
be found by the roadside here and there. Until 
one finds the fringed gentian it seems to be the 
fairest flower of the fall. It also is a wonderful 
blue; a more intense delft-like blue than the soft 
rich blue of the fringed gentian. John Burroughs 
finds it “intensely blue;” Thoreau calls it “a tran- 
scendant blue, a splendid blue, light in the shade 
and turning purple with age. Bluer than the 
bluest sky, they lurk in the moist and shady re¬ 
cesses of the banks,” he writes. This is some¬ 
times true, but not always. There are plenty of 
them to be found in the open meadows, but water 
is essential. They are never found far from wet 
and swamp-like soil and are usually half concealed 
by the long rank grass. Thomas Wentworth Hig- 
ginson calls them “barrel gentians,” which is a 
local name for them in some states. And indeed 
