Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/55

Rh meadow-beauty; an odd creature, with a tangle of long stamens; bright-colored, showy in its intention, so to speak, but rather curious than beautiful, in spite of its name; especially because the petals have not the grace to fall when they are done, but hang, withered and discolored, to spoil the grace of later comers. The prettiest thing about it all, after the freshly opened first flower, is the urn-shaped capsule. That, to me, is of really classic elegance.

Now I have crossed the road and am seated on a chestnut stump, with my back against a tree, on the edge of a broad, rolling, closely cropped cattle-pasture, a piece of genuine New England. Scattered loosely over it are young, straight, slender-waisted, shoulder-high cedars, and on my right hand is a big patch of hardhack, growing in tufts of a dozen stalks each, every one tipped with an arrow-head of pink blossoms. The whole pasture is full of sunshine. Down at the lower end is a long, narrow, irregular-shaped pond. I cannot see it because of a natural hedge against the fence-row on my left; but somehow the landscape takes an added beauty