These September Days 1 73 



beside the brooks and in the marshes it flames 

 forth, a splendid beacon of the wayfarer s quest. 

 The snake-head yet blooms in the marsh, and 

 there the fringed gentian should be frequent. 

 The late botrychiums are now in trim among the 

 ferns, things lightly passed over, often never 

 seen, but adding a little beauty of frond to the 

 many beauties of earth, in the midst of the grasses 

 and lingering second growth clovers in the moist 

 meadow. 



We hear the autumn bemoaned as a season of 

 death, and indeed superficially it is such a season. 

 But how superficially ! For the truth is to any 

 one who observes Nature and sees things sanely, 

 the autumn is the season of promise. What hath 

 been shall be, and the flowers that fade, the leaves 

 that fall, are but forms of life that have fulfilled 

 their functions, and pass life on to another year. 

 So is it with our own human tenure. Its purpose 

 is filled and its end has come. What, then, is 

 this death that men fear, and which seems to our 

 poor race the end of all ? It is but the period put 

 to the transient show, the pause in the eternal 

 progress. What is not essential is stripped off, 

 and that which remains is the core and inner truth 

 of life. That goes on endlessly ; and human 

 souls that have breathed the breath of that inner 

 life go on as endlessly. No one else has so 



