CHAPTER XV 



A FRINGED GENTIAN 



THE burning leaves and stubble filled the 

 air with a smoky haze, which to the artistic 

 eye is like going over a poem and taking 

 the superfluous adjectives out of it. The autum 

 nal foliage has misty recessions, as if one saw the 

 perspectives through a delicate gauze, as we some 

 times see them in the theatre. It is during the 

 bright days when September has merged into 

 October that our landscapes wear for a while the 

 softened gradations that a wet climate affords, 

 and which the English artists, who visit us in 

 August, always miss. They shade their eyes from 

 the chromatic garishness of Midsummer, as if the 

 loveliness were too pronounced. But now the 

 emphasis gives way to suggestiveness. Every 

 thing is mellowed by the intervening medium. 

 October does for our picture what time has done 

 for most of the European pictures. The sumach 

 and the Virginia creeper, those proletariats of the 



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