Still farther, another unseen stretch of corn land intervening, the forest crowned ridge meets the soft sky in a line of lavender, as if it were a strata cloud lying low on the horizon.  From this distance the lavender and purple are almost changeless every sunny day the year around.  Always the Enchanted Land and the Delectable Mountains over across the valley.  How like the alluring prospect across the valley of years!  Always the same soft lavender haze there, while the woods here run through all the gamut of color, from the downy pinks and whites and the tender greens of spring through the deeper greens of summer to the crimson and scarlet of the fall, and the russets, grays, and coffee-browns of the winter.  When the foliage of the forest has deepened into one dark shade of verdure then we know that June is far spent, spring has gone and summer is here.  The uniform green is not monotonous.  See the woods in the hour before sunset when the slanting light gives the foliage consummate glory.  See them again in the white light of a clear noon when the glazed leaves seem to reflect a white veil over the pure verdure; and again when the breeze ripples through the leafy canopy, showing the silvery under-surfaces of the maple leaves, the neat spray of the river birches, the deeply cleft leaves of the scarlet oak and the finely pinnate leaves of the honey locust.  Each has a glory now peculiar to itself and to June.

There is much beauty of color in the woodland undergrowth.  Tall torches touched with the crimson of the sunset sky are made of the shell-bark hickory whose inner bud scales enlarge into enormous, leathery bracts, often crimsoning into rare brilliance.  Circles of creamy white here and there among the hazel brush mark the later blossoms of the sweet viburnum.  Sweeping curves like sculptured arms bearing thickly clustered hemispheres of purplish white are seen on the rocky slope where the nine-bark grows above the lingering columbines.  White wands which look so beautiful are merely the ends of the common tall blackberry, and the wild rose sweetens the same banks.  Flattish clusters of creamy white blossoms are the loose cymes of the red osier dogwood, but it is not nearly so beautiful now as it was last January when its blood-red stems made a striking contrast with the snow.  The bright carmine bark has faded to a dull green and the shrub is a disappointment now, despite its blossoms.  So is the cottonwood a disappointment.  Its wealth of shining green foliage is beautiful, yet we sigh for the lost glory of the midwinter days when the horizontal rays of the setting sun made aureoles of golden light around its yellow, shining limbs.

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