and the road hasn't changed much since, though the fences which were
later threaded through the shrubs and trees on either side, run
straighter. Never was summer day long enough for me to see and to
study all that the old road had to show. Here, at the moist edge of
the road, the ditch stone-crop is opening its yellow-green flowers,
each one a study in perfect symmetry. With the showy, straw-colored
cyperus it flourishes under the friendly shade of the overhanging
cord-grasses whose flowering stalks already have shot up beyond the
reach of a man. Among them grows the tall blue vervain, its tapering
fingers adorned with circles of blue flowers, like sapphire rings
passing from the base to the tips of the fingers. You must part these
grasses and pass through them to see the thicket of golden-rod making
ready for the yellow festival later on. White cymes of spicy basil are
mingled with the purple loosestrife and back of these the fleabanes
lift daisy-like heads among the hazel overhanging the wire fence. Then
the elms and the oaks and in the openings the snowy, starry campion
whose fringed petals are beginning to close, marking the morning's
advance. In the moist places the Canada lily glows like a flaming
torch, its pendant bells slowly swinging in the breeze, ringing in
the annual climax and jubilee of the flowering season.

Across the road the monkey flower grins affably at the edge of the
grass and the water hemlock, with a hollow stem as big as a gun-barrel
and tall as a man, spreads its large umbels of tiny white flowers on
curving branches like a vase-shaped elm in miniature. Twice or thrice
pinnate leaves, toothed like a tenon saw, with conspicuous veins
ending in the notches, brand it as the beaver poison, otherwise known
as the musquash root and spotted cowbane. From its tuberous roots was
prepared the poison which Socrates drank without fear; why should he
fear death? Does he not still live among us? Does he not question us,