Is Jack Frost the Real Artist? 



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" Jacky Frost, Jacky Frost, 



Came in the night; 

 Left the meadows that he crossed 



All gleaming white ; 

 Painted with his silver brush 



Every window-pane ; 

 Kissed the leaves and made them blush, — 



Blush, blush again! " 



O SANG "Toto," the 

 youngest boy, keeping 

 himself cheerful dur- 

 ing an enforced stay 

 in bed with a bad foot. 

 He will climb and 

 jump with no heed to 

 the limit of his strength 

 or skill, until he bumps 

 into that limit pretty 

 hard, as in the present case. He was 

 making a brave attempt to have a good 

 time in spite of the hurt and the band- 

 ages, so his mother and the rest of us 

 were seeking ways to help him keep his 

 mind off his troubles. 



"About that song" said I, "it's a 

 nice song, and I like to hear you 

 sing it. But does Jack Frost really do 

 all that? " 



" 'Course he does," he maintained 

 stoutly; and the rest of the children 

 joined their evidence to his. " Haven't 

 you seen it ? 

 Don't the leaves 

 turn red when he 

 comes? " 



"Yes; but let's 

 look into that. 

 Do you remem- 

 ber the gum tree 

 that had the 

 flaming red 

 branch in August? 

 been here then." 



" What does turn the leaves red and 

 yellow? " he asked. 



Jack Frost hadn't 



" They turn themselves, and they'll 

 turn at the right time, frost or not." 



From that, we talked over the whole 

 subject, and this is what we got out of it : 



BRIGHT-colored autumn leaves seem 

 to depend on the place and on the 

 kind of tree. Two places in the 

 world the autumn leaves have more 

 color than anywhere else; these are in 

 the northeast parts, generally speaking, 

 of the two great land divisions of the Old 

 World and the New, or in Japan and the 

 nearby lands of Asia, and in Canada and 

 our own New England. It is said that 

 nowhere on earth is there the gorgeous 

 autumn foliage of the northeastern United 

 States. " Indian summer," so they say, 

 is named from the tints dear to the eye of 

 the savage, and is an American institution. 

 Yet place does not mean everything. 

 American trees are used in the parks of 

 England to add the color that is lacking 

 in the native trees, for high lights in 

 landscape art. Persons in California, who 

 miss the bright leaves generally lacking 

 on the west coasts of the great land sur- 

 faces, try to make up for the loss by 

 planting eastern trees. I remember in 

 the collection of trees, or arboretum, at 

 Stanford University, where there is not 

 much cold weather and where palms 

 thrive, there are some trees of brilliant 

 hue, and I found that about all were from 

 New York and New England. Their 

 .... , T ^,^ colors come each 



i^->-wiX«: '^V^Siy:::^^ year even though 

 the leaves may 

 drop before a 

 frost comes. 

 Trees in the Ar- 

 nold arboretum 

 near Boston, 

 which have come 

 from regions 

 where gay autumn tints are unknown, 

 just keep their green color alone, even 

 though their Massachusetts cousins put 

 on scarlet and gold. 



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