The Rambles of an Idler 



The gloss on the chestnut redeems the color 

 and gladdens the eye, and thoughts of decay do 

 not go with the blanched shellbarks that fall 

 with force upon the sunbaked sod and roll into 

 crisp grass covers that try my patience. When 

 greed is uppermost, the precise tint of the treas- 

 ure means nothing. A November day, in the 

 meadows, under shellbark hickories, or in some 

 remote upland field, under a spreading chestnut 

 tree, offers, hour for hour, more objects for ad- 

 miration than half the days since June. The 

 crumbs from the table but vaguely hint of the 

 feast, but this is not fairly applied to Nature's 

 board. There is no interim when it is bare. 

 The wayfarer can find one dish, if not a dozen, 

 and his digestion is the gainer. A November 

 day is not an empty one, if we only make a col- 

 lection of acorns. How many neighbors have 

 you who can name the oaks by their fruits I 



The demand for endless variety is not indica- 

 tive of immeasurable capacity to assimilate it. 

 He who knows that a single grain of sand is a 

 fragment of quartz and was once a part of a 

 vein of glassy rock, and how it came to be what 

 it was and is, is wiser than are those tiresome 

 utilitarians who crowd the highways and cry 



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