Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/48

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504th STATION.


Flower Toying.


KARLSON joined the others in conversation, and Phylax was enraged that he could not triumph,—not even dispute. I said to him, that my opinions agreed with his, though not on the same grounds, and that, uniting, we would subsequently together issue forth and attack Karlson,

I then went with my silken club to Nadine, and on a rose-bush showed her the flying light-magnets, the shining will-o'-the-wisps of night, the brown glowworms which she had never seen by day. I colonized a box with them for a living firework in the evening. Chance had romantically bent a bright rose-bush between graceful bluebells, on a green marble boundary stone; its foliage had the appearance of being seamed with black glowworms;[1] the lily-chafer hung like gold embroidery on the pale, ripe roses; long-legged, shining gnats ran glittering over the thorns; the flower-divers and nectary treasure-diggers, the bees, covered the rose-cups with new thorns; the butterflies, like moving tints, like Epicurean colors, gently floated round the branch's gay world. I cannot tell you how this glance, turned from the vast whole on to a beautiful small portion, gave a warmer glow to our hearts and

  1. The male glowworms are black.