ct shall be flat, and not conical. Into
this, between the blossoms, carefully stick the stems of a few fully
spread lace flowers (or wild carrot), with stems two or three inches
longer than you have allowed the goldenrod stems. Each must have full
space to display every tiny floweret, and not to hide the golden glory
beneath. When prepared, set the vase or bowl on the floor, before a
grate or to light up some gloomy corner. Properly done the effect is a
marvel and a joy forever, like lace over sunshine, like some fairy
creation too dainty for words to picture.

IX.

DOWN THE MEADOW.

The bird-baby world was not bounded by any pasture, however enchanting,
and I have not told all the charms of this one. The house where I found
bed and board, in the intervals of bird study,--once a farmhouse, now an
"inn of rest" for a country-loving-family,--was happily possessed of two
attractions: the pasture toward which I turned with the morning sun, and
a meadow which drew me when shadows grew long in the afternoon. This
meadow began at the road passing in front of the house, and extended to
the salt marsh which separated us from the sea. The marsh was always a
beautiful picture,

"Stretching off in a pleasant plain
To the terminal blue of the main."

It was never twice the same, for it changed with every passing cloud,
with every phase of the weather, with every tide; one never tired of it.
And it was full of winged life: not only the beautiful gulls,

"Whose twinkling wings half lost amid the blue,"

in a white cloud over the far-off beach, but small birds of several
kinds, who never came near enough to dry land to be identified.
Sharp-tailed sparrows appeared on the meadow after grass was cut, and
their exquisite ringing trill could always be heard from the bank; crows
fed upon it every day; blackbirds' wings were always over it; and above
all, sandpipers were there,

"Calling dear and sweet from cove to cove."

One afternoon, starting down the meadow on my usual visit to the
sandpiper little folk, I heard a low cry of "flick-er! flick-er!" and
there on the grass before me were two of the birds face to face. One was
an adult, but the other was a nearly grown young one, and I saw in an
instant that I had unwittingly intruded upon the breakfast he was about
to receive. In the goldenwing family--as perhaps not every one knows--a
repast is not over with one poke into an open bill; it is a far more
serious a