The wild flowers don't look
so pretty in the tin cups of water as they did back in the woods.
There is something cheap and common about them. Throw 'em out. The
poor plants that planned through all the ages how to attract the
first smart insects of the season, and trick them into setting the
seeds for next years' flowers did not reckon that these very means
whereby they hoped to rear a family would prove their undoing at the
hands of those who plume themselves a little on their refinement,
they "are so fond of flowers."
Old Winter hates to give up that he is beaten. It's a funny thing,
but when you hear a person sing, "Good-a-by, Summer, good-a-by,
good-a-by," you always feel kind of sad and sorry. It's going, the
time of year when you can stay out of doors most of the time, when
you can go in swimming, and the Sunday-school picnic, and the circus,
and play base-ball and camp out, and there's no school, and
everything nice, and watermelons, and all like that. Good-by,
good-by, and you begin to sniff a little. The departure of summer
is dignified and even splendid, but the earth looks so sordid and
draggle-trailed when winter goes, that onions could not bring a tear.
Old winter likes to tease. Aha! You thought I was gone, did you?
Not yet, my child, not yet!" And he sends us huckleberry-colored
clouds from the northwest, from which snow-flakes big as copper
cents solemnly waggle down, as if they really expected the schoolboy
to shout: "It snows! Hurrah!" and makes his shout heard through
parlor and hall.
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