these huge iron-clad brutes were represented
chewing up different portions of each other's bodies in a forest of the
lower cretaceous period. So far as he could learn, that sort of thing
went on unchecked for hundreds of thousands of years, and was typical of
the intercourse of the races of man till a comparatively recent period.
There was also that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all the
early brutes were disgusting. He delighted to think that even the lower
animals had improved, both in appearance and disposition.

The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, having
been taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about.

NINTH STUDY

I

Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circumstances.

In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when the
housewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,
later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often, too,
the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic repression,
which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at the
front door. This is a yearning after beauty and ornamentation which has
no other means of gratifying itself.

In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thus
discloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste. You
may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathway to the
front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;--love and
religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. The sacredness of the
Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and unrequited affection,
the slow years of gathering and wasting sweetness, are in the smell
of the pink and the sweet-clover. These sentimental plants breathe
something of the longing of the maiden who sits in the Sunday evenings
of summer on the lonesome front doorstone, singing the hymns of the
saints, and perennial as the myrtle that grows thereby.

Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love and
devotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth, in
our latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse of the sun
happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over the world.
Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing the chill from
that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much more penetrating
than that from the coming on of night, which shortly followed. It
w