A FRINGED GENTIAN 



our eyes, and, like children, we catch a glimpse 

 of the golden age. I dare say that the paradi 

 saical fancies of all peoples have been caught 

 through the cathedral windows of the woods in 

 this voluptuous month. 



I never knew until the Doctor and I set out 

 to make the acquaintance of October what a sweet 

 mystery it enfolded. Once under the spell I 

 could not quite rid myself of the notion that 

 Nature has her dim religious lights, and sits at 

 times, like Jeremy Taylor s widow, in a clean 

 apron with her hands crossed and her work done. 

 It was impossible not to feel that she had laid 

 her soft muffling finger upon all the cognitions. 

 Every sense was hushed and recipient. Every 

 sound that summer makes sharp and sibilant 

 sunk to a drowsy pianissimo. Every breeze 

 murmured. Even the crows had interposed mel 

 lowing spaces. I heard them in a new perspec 

 tive. It was so with the visual world. I saw 

 that it was drawing a soft drapery around it, and 

 animate things were hushed as if they had come 

 into the chancel of the year. 



So, too, October has her special symbols and 

 inscrutable souvenirs, one of which the Doctor 

 hunted up and brought me with as much honest 

 delight as if he had found a new reading of Shak- 

 spere, or an old Biblical text had risen up and 

 fitted itself to a new want. 



Later we seated ourselves at the foot of a gentle 

 slope, having reached a narrow and brambly mar 

 gin of a broad meadow. Over on the other side 



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