Or, if one tire of the open meadows, and the sun be too hot, think of
the laurel groves,--not now, as in the Christmas-time, white with snow,
but white again with thousands on thousands of argent cups, loaded with
blossoms, meeting over your head in arches of flowery tracery, and one
solitary tree standing deep in the woods, like a frigate packed with her
silver canvas lying out to windward of the fleet of merchantmen she is
convoying. The cool laurel groves! Often as one sees that sight, it is
always with a fresh shock of pleasure to the frame.
Then, when autumn comes and the leaves change, there is still endless
variety for the little basket or botanical-case which swings lightly on
your arm or hangs across your shoulder. Owen Jones never devised any
ornaments for wall or niche one half so brilliant as the color of those
leaves which a dexterous hand will readily group upon a sheet of white
paper, where your eye may catch it, as, after achieving a successful
sentence, you look up from your study-table. Speaking of leaves, who
knows how large an oak-loaf will grow in this New England? I have just
sat down after measuring one gathered in a bit of copse hard by the town
of M----, a bit of copse which skirts a beautiful wild ravine, with a
superb hemlock and pine grove creeping down its steep bank.
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