re I have felt the beauty of the world.
And with the new brightness in which every common scene has been
apparelled there has stirred within me a need of human companionship
unknown in the past. It is as if Nature had spread out her last
loveliness and said: "See! You have before you now all that you
can ever get from me! It is not enough. Realize this in time. I
am your Mother. Love me as a child. But remember! such love can
be only a little part of your life."

Therefore I have spent the month restless, on the eve of change,
drawn to Nature, driven from her. In September it will be different,
for then there are more things to do on my small farm, and I see
people on account of my grapes and pears. My malady this August
has been an idle mind--so idle that a letter from Georgiana seems
its main event. This was written from the old home of Audubon on
the Hudson, whither they had gone sight-seeing. It must have been
to her much like a pilgrimage to a shrine. She wrote informally,
telling me about the place and enclosing a sprig of cedar from one
of the trees in the yard. Her mind was evidently overflowing on
the subject. It was rather pleasant to have the overflow turned
my way. I shall plant the cedar where it will say always green.

I saw Georgiana once more before he leaving. The sudden appearance
of her brother and cousin, and the new that she would return with
them for the summer, spurred me up to make another attempt at those
Audubon drawings.

How easy it was to get them! It is what a man thinks a woman will
be willing to do that she seldom does. But she made a confession.
When she first found that I was a smallish student of birds, she
feared I would not like Audubon, since men so often sneer at those
who do in a grand way what they can do only in a poor one. I had
another revelation of Georgiana's more serious nature, which is
always aroused by the memory of her father. There is something
beautiful and steadfast in this girl's soul. In our hemisphere vines
climb round from left to right; if Georgiana loved you she would,
if bidden, reverse every law of her nature for you as completely
as a vine that you had caused to twine from right to left.

Sylvia enters school the 1st of September, and Georgiana is to be
at home then to see to that. How surely she drives this family
before her--and with as gentle a touch as that of a slow south wind
upon the clouds.

Those poor fist drawings of A