cares that infest the day" shall fall like the burden from Christian's
back as we watch the fleecy clouds or the silver stars mirrored in the
waveless waters. We shall call the constellations by their names and
become on speaking terms with the luring voices of the forest
fairyland. We shall "thrill with the resurrection called spring," and
steep our senses in the fragrance of its flowers; glory in the gushing
life of summer, sigh at the sweet sorrows of autumn, and wax virile in
winter's strength of storm and snow.

* * * * *

We shall begin our pilgrimages lacking in Nature's lore, many of us,
as were four men who recently walked down a city street and looked at
the trees which lined the way. One confessed ignorance as to their
identity; another thought he knew but couldn't remember; a third said
they looked like maples; and a fourth thought that silence, like
honesty, as the copybooks used to tell us, was the best policy. And
yet the name linden was writ large on those trees,--on the beautiful
gray bark, the alternate method of twig arrangement, the fat red
winter buds, which shone in the sunshine like rubies, and especially
on the little cymes of pendulous, pea-like fruit, each cyme attached
to its membranaceous bract or wing. Of course, if the pedestrians had
been in the midst of rich woods and there found a trunk of great girth
and rough bark, surrounded by several handsome young stems with
close-fitting coats, the group looking for all the world like a
comfortable old mother with a family of fresh-faced, willowy,
marriageable daughters, every member of the quartet would have
chorused, bass-wood.

But no one need be ashamed to confess an ignorance of botany.