A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with 

 one's personal history and that of one's friends, inter' 

 woven with one's tastes, preferences, and character, 

 and constitutes a sort of unwritten, but withal mani^ 

 fest, autobiography." _ AIFRED A 



OCTOBER 



/ "~T S HE swallows are gone and Summer is over ! 



Let us go out into the Autumn world. How keen is 

 the morning air as we walk in Nature's studio, for she is, 

 as it were, sitting at her easel. How glorious are the trees 

 in the fitful sunlight of October, as it comes and goes, 

 bathing the world now in fiery gold, now in sombre shadows ! 

 In the woodlands the winged seeds of the maple are falling 

 down among the leaf showers, whirling as they fall earthward 

 in their own peculiar manner. 



The sheaves are gathered in, the fields are bare, and a 

 look of increasing desolation is noticed day by day. 



Now that the fiery finger of Autumn is touching the 

 leaves on tree and hedge, the world seems to stand out in 

 greater glory, far surpassing the radiancy of Summer, when 

 gardens were filled to overflowing with numberless floral 

 gems, and the leaves were green, sparkling brightly in the sun- 

 light. We rejoiced to sit under branches of the trees, out of 

 the sun's rays, bathed in the cool, green-tinted shadows of 

 the twinkling leaves, of which they are fast being stripped. 

 Soon the trees will be wholly dismantled, to stand out bare 

 and brown against the grey sky of Winter, and ghostly their 

 form will be discerned through the thick mists, while the 

 north wind is sighing mournfully through their nakedness. 



243 



