Witch Hazel Bloom 2 1 1 



JVitch Hazel Bloom 



THE rich, ripe beauty of the mature year 

 now delights all who in our clime and 

 latitude walk forth to view the great 

 colour harmonies of the forests, the completed 

 repose of the harvested fields, and breathe the 

 vital elixir of the border air, blending summer 

 sweetness with winter strength. If the pearl of 

 the year be June, with its glorious sensuous loveli 

 ness, then October is the ruby, deeply founded, 

 superbly toned, a crystallization, not an accretion, 

 and royal even in the rough. For there is no 

 year in which October is not glorious, though its 

 degrees of hospitality are by no means uniform. 

 Stern storms and frosts may forbid its minor 

 graces of tenderness, its veiling hazes, its woo 

 ing zephyrs, its blossoming of clover, its warm 

 hillsides beneath the curtained sun, its clear north 

 winds that sweep the heavens clear, and provoke 

 the mountains into joy. But never can storms 

 or frosts utterly abolish the transfiguring colour of 

 the ripening trees, which under skies of cloud as 



