woodland. Besides, are there not acres of 

 sweetish rich beechnuts along the bottoms 

 and upland hill-sides, to say nothing of hips 

 and haws, persimmons, and such small deer ? 



In the oak-wood leaves lie heaped and 

 mounded. How they rustle and spring as 

 the foot presses them ! Even in death they 

 keep the impress of strength. Especially 

 the black-jack's crimson foliage, richest in 

 hue of all the sisterhood. The tree is not 

 handsome gnarled, scrawny, rough of bark, 

 with stiff limbs angularly outspread from the 

 crooked trunk. " Too crooked to lie still." 

 the woodsmen say, even after you have 

 painfully chopped to the knotty heart and 

 sent it crashing to earth. For eleven 

 months of the year it stands, a sylvan Cin- 

 derella, so uncouth that the very birds laugh 

 it to scorn. Frost changes all that hangs 

 a mantle of rubies over all the boughs. The 

 glory deepens, brightens, endures. Far into 

 November you may see the flush of it glow- 

 ing sparsely along field and wood-side. Oft- 

 en the red, glossy leaves dance down with 

 the first snow, and show like autumn's life- 

 blood staining the mantle of her conqueror. 



What charm fills all the fields ! Frost, 

 like adversity, makes an end to weeds, yet 

 hardly sears grass and grain. What a faint, 



