THE INDIAN SUMMER 



WHEN November arrives, leading along with it the 

 short days and the darkness of winter, it opens the win- 

 dows of the deep woods, pervaded all summer by a sort of 

 artificial twilight. The general denuded state of the forest 

 admits the sunshine into its interior, and brightens it with 

 a cheerfulness exceeding that of any other season. Some 

 light-tinted leaves still remain upon the trees which have 

 been screened by their situation from the frost and the 

 wind, and many an interesting object is exposed to view 

 which was concealed by the foliage in summer. A few 

 asters and gentians still linger in some protected nook, 

 and the chickadees and hemp-birds make the wood lively 

 by their garrulity and their motions. The ground is cov- 

 ered with red, brown, and yellow leaves, making a pleas- 

 ant carpet for our feet, and increasing all the pleasures 

 of a woodland ramble. 



After the fall of the leaf is completed, then, accord- 

 ing to tradition, comes the Indian Summer, a fruitful 

 theme both for poets and philosophical writers, but of 

 which no one knows anything from experience. It may, 

 after all, be only a- myth, like the halcyon days of the 

 ancients, the offspring of a tradition that originated with 

 certain customs of the Indian, and which occasional days 

 of fine weather in the autumn have served to perpetuate. 

 It is certain that we have now in the Eastern States no 

 regular coming of this delightful term of mildness and 

 serenity, this smiling interruption of the melancholy 

 days of autumn. We are greeted occasionally by two or 



