loftiest height of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a
silken banner, colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the
ground the pole was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of
the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by
ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty different
colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers, and blossoms of the
wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and
dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine-tree.
Where this green and flowery splendor terminated, the shaft of
the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the
banner at its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant
wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in the sunniest
spots of the forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the
colonists had reared from English seed. O, people of the Golden
Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise flowers!

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the
Maypole? It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven
from their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought
refuge, as all the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the
West. These were Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian
ancestry. On the shoulders of a comely youth uprose the head and
branching antlers of a stag; a second, human in all other points,
had the grim visage of a wolf; a third, still with the trunk and
limbs of a mortal man, showed the beard and horns of a venerable
he-goat. There was the likeness of a bear erect, brute in all but
his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk stockings. And
here again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark
forest, lending each of his fore paws to the grasp of a human
hand, and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His