Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/191

 little brown heads of my poor wanderers. Why need I have meddled with them?

Farmers may despise the thistle, but I’m sure the butterflies love it. Oh, the beauties I have seen this day,—not the delicately tinted butterflies of Summer, but living, glowing jewels, fluttering always above the thistles! One rested for a long time upon a purple bloom quite near me, opening and closing his exquisite wings of black and gold, sun-illumined, like dainty, gauzy Japanese fans.

I must go back and tell you of the beauty of that towering hill directly in front of us. It is really a mountain, I think, but here we call it a hill. We had quite forgotten the many maple trees growing upon its slopes, the green of their foliage in the Summer-time being lost in that of the firs. Though we forgot, Autumn remembered; and, grieved that her favorites should remain unrecognized in that monotony of green, she stole softly into the shadowy forest, traced up the lost Cinderellas, and then, with the gorgeous dyes of Turner and the brush of an impressionist, splashed all their broad leaves with that ineffable glory which is the distinctive badge of the maple family. To-day, as I look up and see them standing on the heights, the rich blazonry of their armorial bearings flashing in the fair October sunlight, I say aloud, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”