And—isn’t it funny?—the old man tells me, as he has never failed to do for many a year as I pause by the open well, where we part, how he found gold, as he thought, when he dug the well, and kept the mighty secret until his plans were laid; and it proved to be nothing but lumps of iron and brimstone! If old ladies prove, at times, to be a bit garrulous, what of the old men who are so prone to criticise? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PART III. IN SUMMER. ------- A Noisome Weed. The whispering breeze that at sunrise calls me out of doors is laden now with the matchless odor of the blooming grape. Every draught of the vinous air intoxicates and the eye rests upon the brilliant landscape, but is scarce content. A curious feeling of indecision meets me at the very outset. Meadow and upland are alike urgent; field and forest offer their choicest gifts; rugged rocks and sparkling river both beckon to me. Whither, then, of a bright June morning, should the rambler stroll? For is it not true that beauty, when in bewildering confusion, ceases to be beautiful? When a thousand birds, as a great cloud, shut out the sun, they are but a cloud; but a single one, perched upon a tree, is a marvel of grace and beauty. So, the sloping hillside and the weedy meadows, brilliant with every shade of freshest green and starred with a hundred tints, roseate, golden, and white, call for an infinite power of contemplation, and leave the wanderer dazed. Shutting my eyes to the wealth of bloom about me, closing my ears to the melody of every nesting bird, I start upon the doubtful quest of the commonplace, hoping to chance upon some neglected spot, that happily generous June has overlooked. As has happened so frequently before, where I least expected it, there stood the object of my search—a gem in a setting not so elaborate that its beauties were obscured. In a long-neglected pasture, a wide meadow torn by freshets, foul with noisome weeds, and strown with the wreckage left by winter’s storms, grew many a graceful vine that few have heeded; for it is not enough that the botanist should long ago have named it and that others should have besmirched its proper fame by calling it “carrion-flower.” Can we not forgive the offense to the nostril, when the eye is captivated? Does it go for nothing that a plant beautifies the waste places and invites you to contemplate it as the acme of grace, because in self-defense it warns you to keep at a respectful distance?