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4 in the last week of May all the plain flowers so lately fresh in the power of full beauty were dead their parched leaves
crisped fell to ponder beneath my feet as though they had been cast into the oven they had not like the plants of our west,
weeks months to grow old in, but they died ere they could fade, standing together holding out their branches erect green as
life, but they did not die too soon they liked a whole life stored away abundance of future life principle in the seed After
riding for two days in this Autumn I found summer again in the higher foothills, flower petals were spread confidingly open
the grasses waved their illegible all bright gay in the colors of healthy prime the winds streams were cool, forty or fifty
miles further into the mountains I came to spring the leaves of the oak were 00461 1 18 At a sheep ranch between the
Tuolumne Stanislaus rivers Nov 1st 1868 Dear friend Mrs Carr, I was extremely glad to receive yet one more of your ever
welcome letters it found me two weeks ago. I rode over to Hopeton to seek for letters. I had to pass through a bed of co illegible
two or three miles in diameter, they were in the glow of full prime forming a lake of the purest composited gold I ever behold.
Some emjlo plants had upwards of three thousand heads their petal surface exceeded their leaf surface thirty or forty times,
because of the constancy of the winds all these flowers faced in one direction (SE) I thought as I gazed upon