From Pillar to Post 



seeking the Southern woods, tarry in a con- 

 tented way as if the goal of their journey had 

 been reached. No leaf, to-day, falls like a clod, 

 but floats like a fairy in the golden air and 

 touches earth at last, so lightly, that we look 

 for it to rise again and seek its one-time sum- 

 mer home in the tree-top. Nature herself is a 

 poet beyond compare these dreamy days. Why 

 should I call to mind any of life's realities? 

 The grinning crew are awaiting me when I face 

 the world again, while here is not the world but 

 the valley of a dead past, and I can walk and 

 think of what I will, even to imagining myself 

 an English settler, a subject of Queen Anne ; 

 anything at all but the plagues of my existence, 

 the grim fact that this is 190- and not two cen- 

 turies ago. 



Nature loves to spin us around in a sudden 

 fashion that is startling but wholesome, if not 

 pleasant; and out of the airy realm of fancy 

 face us toward a stern fact. It was so with me 

 to-day. I saw a large portion of a tree encased 

 in clay. Not silicified, but woody enough to 

 burn, when dry, and yet it has been in this bed 

 of clay for, who can tell, how many centuries. 

 If the clay is cretaceous, a cautious geologist 



275 



