Here we have a contrast. A dappled rock has taken possession of this little corner, or the corner has been built around it, if you choose--a "gray" rock we would call it in common parlance, but it is a gray composed of a checkered multitude of tints, colors which upon a rock, it would seem, were hardly worth an appreciative glance; but only let them be exhibited upon a fold of Lyons silk or Jouvin kid glove, and dignify them by the compliments of "ashes of roses," or "London smoke," and how eagerly they are sought, how exquisite they become. I speak in moderation when I say that I have often sat and counted as many as thirty just such tints upon the surface of a small "gray" rock, each _distinct_, and all so _refined_ and exquisite in shade. This rounded bowlder is no exception; and with its tufted spots of jetty moss, and outcroppings of glistening quartz, its rounded, spreading blots of greenish lichens, and mottled groundwork, it may well defy the craft of the most skilled palette. And when these grays are contrasted with tender yellow greens and browns of fading ferns, such as fringe the borders of the one before me, with a background of scarlet whortleberry bushes and deep-green sprays of blackberry clustering about the loosening bark of a crumbling stump, with its shelving growth of fungus hiding among its brown debris, one may well pause and wonder which to choose, or where a single touch is wanting in the perfect unity and harmony of either.
Another jutting corner, and we confront a swaying mass of gold and purple--that magnificent regal combination of graceful golden-rod and asters that glorifies our autumn from September to the falling leaf. There are a number of species of golden-rod, varying as much in their intensity of color as in their time of bloom. The earliest appear in the heart of summer, in wood and meadow; while others, larger and more stately, lift up in their midst their plumy, undeveloped tips, and wait until their predecessors are old and gray ere they roll out their wreaths of gold. For weeks the roads and by-ways have been lit up with their brilliant glow, that parting sunset gleam that lingers with the closing year. This splendid cluster is full six feet in height, and towers above the highest rail, or rather where the rail ought to be, for it is lost from sight beneath a dense fret-work of prickly smilax--and such brilliant, polished leaves! how they glitter in the sun! almost as though wet with dew.