he brilliant blue lobelia is breaking into
blossom, contrasted with the bright lemon yellow of the helenium.
Masses of pink light up shady places where the false dragonhead grows,
and the jewel weeds are thickly hung with pendant blossoms of orange
and pale yellow. The river winds along the low shores and reedy
shallows, sometimes partly losing itself in placid ponds, gay with the
crimson and green and blue of the dragon-flies, and fringed by dark
green reeds and rushes from which Pan might well have made his pipes
to charm the gods, and the Naiads of the sacred fount. Onward it goes,
now passing by a sloping bank which the gray-leaved golden rod has
covered with a wealth of golden glory; for this low-growing golden rod
which blossoms so early, is the most brilliantly and richly golden of
them all.

[Illustration: "STILL THE RIVER BECKONS ONWARD" (p. 93)]

Great fluffy masses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems
are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller clusters of royal
purple in the grassy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A
stretch of grassy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is
gemmed with the thick purple clusters of the milkwort, which shines
among the grass as the early blossoms of the clover used to do when
the summer was young. Here and there the little bag-like blossoms of
the gerardia, or foxglove, are opening among the stems of the fading
grass, and the white blossoms of the marsh bellflower, the midget
member of the campanula family, are apparently as fresh and numerous
as they were in early July. Water horehound has whitish whorls of tiny
blossoms and prettily cut leaves, which are as interesting as the
flowers. And still the river beckons onward, murmuring that the quest
of the flower-lover is not yet done and that the prize awaits the
victor who presses on to the swamp around the bend where the birches
hang drooping branches over quiet, fish-full pools. The prize is worth
the extra half-mile. It is the gorgeous flower of late summer, a fit
symbol of August, the queen blossom of a queenly month, the brilliant
red lobelia, or cardinal flower. There is no flower in the year so
full of vivid color. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the purple
torches of the exquisite little fringed orchis (habenaria psychodes)
lights up a swampy place beneath the trees and sheds its delicate
fragrance as a welcome to the bees.

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The lif