the ascendant, troublesome as they are. The good green grass of love
and truthfulness and common sense is more universal, and crowds the
idle weeds to the wall.

But weeds have this virtue: they are not easily discouraged; they
never lose heart entirely; they die game. If they cannot have the
best, they will take up with the poorest; if fortune is unkind to them
to-day, they hope for better luck to-morrow; if they cannot lord it
over a corn-hill, they will sit humbly at its foot and accept what
comes; in all cases they make the most of their opportunities.

VII

AUTUMN TIDES

The season is always a little behind the sun in our climate, just as
the tide is always a little behind the moon. According to the
calendar, the summer ought to culminate about the 21st of June, but in
reality it is some weeks later; June is a maiden month all through. It
is not high noon in nature till about the first or second week in
July. When the chestnut-tree blooms, the meridian of the year is
reached. By the first of August it is fairly one o'clock. The lustre
of the season begins to dim, the foliage of the trees and woods to
tarnish, the plumage of the birds to fade, and their songs to cease.
The hints of approaching fall are on every hand. How suggestive this
thistle-down, for instance, which, as I sit by the open window, comes
in and brushes softly across my hand! The first snowflake tells of
winter not more plainly than this driving down heralds the approach of
fall. Come here, my fairy, and tell me whence you come and whither
you go? What brings you to port here, you gossamer ship sailing the
great sea? How exquisitely frail and delicate! One of the lightest
things in nature; so light that in the closed room here it will hardly
rest in my open palm. A feather is a clod beside it. Only a spider's
web will hold it; coarser objects have no power over it. Caught in the
upper currents of the air and rising above the clouds, it might sail
perpetually. Indeed, one fancies it might almost traverse the
interstellar ether and drive against the stars. And every thistle-head
by the roadside holds hundreds of these sky rovers,--imprisoned Ariels
unable to set themselves free. Their liberation may be by the shock of
the wind, or the rude contact of cattle, but it is oftener the work of
the goldfinch with its complaining brood. The seed of the thistle is
the proper food of this