Indian Summer Reverie 23 1 



cluck and hasten to hide themselves, with boom 

 ing flight. Whatever life moves, whatever beauty 

 shows, is in the tone of waiting and content. 

 Were it not for the alien sharpness of the sports 

 man s gun, there would be no break in the magic 

 of the Indian summer. 



The long moon of rain has filled the springs, 

 lowered by three successive years of drouth. Those 

 lowery days were not without their pleasurable as 

 pect, for in this region Nature can never be beauti- 

 less. There was something of keen delight in the 

 days of eastern winds that tossed the trees and 

 thrashed the falling leaves across the fields ; there 

 was comfort in the temperate rains, that had their 

 mission to fulfill ; the gray days were full of kind 

 promise, with picturesque effects of fog, and dif 

 fusing mists, and strange lights and shades over 

 the wide meadows and on the somber hills. There 

 were snatches of splendour in the forests ; then 

 came the winds and swept the roadways and heaped 

 the ripened leafage in winrows and around the 

 fences and wayside bushes, and there was no more 

 of the golden magnificence of the maples, the 

 olive purples of the ashes, the buff vestures 

 of the beeches, and the chestnuts. The yellow 

 bronzes of the hickories yet remained and the 

 light trembling poplars and the pale birches lin 

 gered. Against such backgrounds still an occa- 



