" Those peerless flowers which in the rudest wind 



Never grow sere, 

 When rooted in the garden of the mind*** 



TENNYSON. 



NOVEMBER 



f I V HE days when the green leaves whispered on waving 

 boughs are over, and the golden and crimson glory 

 of their fading beauty is past now that November, 

 month of bare boughs and empty fields, is with us. 

 With gardens sheltered, and as yet unvisited by any severe 

 frosts, chrysanthemums still claim a friendship, and the 

 arbutus, or strawberry tree, is in perfection, bright and 

 contented-looking, standing friendless in the mist, decked 

 with its fruit and blossom. 



To eyes observant of Nature's movements November is a 

 month of great interest ; the opal pastels of the misty land- 

 scapes, the vignettes of stream and river flowing in silence, 

 are well worth studying. By the stream, no longer the joyous 

 world of birds, insects, and flowers, stand the tall skeletons of 

 thistle and teasel, their foliage so green and glowing in the 

 quivering tangle of the grasses but a short while since. Dead 

 and beyond recognition wave the withered stems of the willow- 

 herb, that were crowned with a mass of rose-red blossoms that, 

 fading, expanded in due course its seed vessels filled with 

 silver down, a striking contrast to the green cascade of the 

 willow trees, whose leaves fell around it like thin strips 

 of yellow satin. But now, along the stream's edge the 

 grey-stemmed trees sigh and shiver in the upward curling 

 mists, standing out silhouetted against the grey sky. But a 



bright morn in November paints for us quite a different 



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