A joyful hour! anticipated keen,
With zest of youthful appetite ...
To spread that table in the wilderness;
The spot selected with deliberate care,
Fastidious from variety of choice,
Where all was beautiful ...
With joyous exultation, guests were led
To our green banquet-room.
Caroline Bowles.

Norman was very sorry to part with his dear young friends, Alfred and Herbert; but he was very glad that his Aunt and Uncle Lester, and his Aunt Clara, were going with them, so that he had not to say good-by to them. As he had traveled over this road when he came west, he had seen these broad prairies before, but they were now enameled with brighter hues. Great patches of purple phlox, a profusion of yellow flowers, and bright 152red lilies, made all the broad expanse a vast flower-garden. His Aunt Clara said that many of the prairie flowers were disappearing in the progress of cultivation. The cattle that now covered the plains destroyed them, and the plow rooted them up.

“Yes,” said his uncle to Norman, “your Aunt Clara sometimes fancies her mission is to cultivate a blooming inclosure, in which she will preserve all the prairie flowers from the extinction to which they are rapidly tending.”

Geneva, which they soon reached, is a pretty town on the Fox River, and the house of Henry’s aunt, whom they had come to visit, had a view of the river and its wooded islands. Norman’s Aunt Clayton was very glad to see him, and very kind to him, so that he was very happy with his new relations. His aunt would bring him, several times a day, a great tumbler of good rich milk, the like of 153which he had not often seen. She sent for Willie Clayton to meet Norman, and the boys asked permission to bathe in the river, Willie assuring Mrs. Lester that it was perfectly safe. They were absent for a long time, and as neither of the boys could swim, Mrs. Lester became very anxious as the dinner-hour approached, and they had not yet returned. Mr. Clayton very kindly offered to go in search of them, and while he was gone the boys made their appearance. They did not know that they had been so long away; they had waded over to the island, and the time slipped away more quickly than they thought.

After dinner Norman said his back was very much burned, exposed, as it had been, to the fierce rays of the sun. His mother put some flour on it, but after a while, it became so painful that he had to lie down on the bed and have it covered with flour. His neck, and back, and 154arms were all bright scarlet, and he suffered very much from the intense burning.

The next day there was to be a school picnic in the grove, and Willie was to speak on the occasion. Norman said it would be impossible for him to dress himself; but when the animating strains of the band floated in his window, as the procession marched to the grove, he thought he might make the effort. His mother helped him to put on his clothes, as his back was all blistered, and he walked with her and his aunt and uncle rather soberly to the p............