ms, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant
bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes
and goes.

The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very
commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day,
late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and
clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and
there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving
back the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while,
an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now that
all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if
he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the
apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,--these and things like
them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years
and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a
reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a
prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we
know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal
blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season
past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is
true of the violet will prove true also of the man?

It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest
flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men
play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would
succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those
who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen
to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and
elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of
transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won
by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of
diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own
nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it
is the meek that inherit the earth.

Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but
still more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We could
get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for the
lower use is often first, in order both of time and of nece