bark of the squirrel, the crack of the hunter's gun, the
first notes of the returning bluebirds, the clean, keen scent of the
earth after rain, the courage and joy of life, motion, action. Seen
from the top of a cliff the acres of foliage spread out in the creek
valley beneath has a motion suggesting the waves of the sea, now
flowing in green billows before the wind, now whipped into spray at
the shore of the creek where the willows show the white sides of their
leaves.

In the fields the far-flung banners of the corn take on ripening tints
and begin to rustle drily in the breeze. Golden ears, wrapped in
tobacco-brown silk, are pushing from tanned and purplish husks.
Newly-plowed fields were made possible by the rains which started the
grass growing in the stubble, changing the color from amber to emerald
and wrought a miracle of verdure in the pastures which August had
baked brown. Here and there the aftermath of red clover has developed
a field of new blossoms,--a little lake of pink where sunshine plays
with shadow and sturdy humble bees spend the days in ecstasy.

* * * * *

Summer puts on her last bright robes for the final floral review
before she is borne by the birds down the valley to set up her court
in the southland. Tall and soldierly, this last gay army of the
flowers passes in review before her. Blazing stars in pink and purple,
tall and picturesque, with long rows of brilliant buttons; regiments
of asters in blue and white and purple; rattle-snake root with big and
quaintly slashed leaves and hundreds of tassels in delicate shades of
lilac, purple and white; swamp sunflowers in dazzling yellow, camped
in millions along the creek bottom to make it more glorious than the
historical pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold; plumy battalions
of golden-rod, marshalled by the sun along every country lane;
companies of tall, saw-leaved sunflowers with golden petals and darker
disks, deployed along the fences and seen at their best in the
twilight when they look like friendly faces with beaming eyes; as I
write them so they march across the land and bow farewell to summer.
There is no floral spectacle in all the land so fine as this march of
the composites over the Iowa prairies and fields in September. That is
the judgment of those who have travelled and observed. In the swamps
and along the ditches the blue lobelias flourish and the companies of
blue gentians are bringing up