INDIAN SUMMER 



There was an echo somewhere in the woods, 

 and we rang all the changes on it. I shouted 

 &quot; Griselle &quot; at the top of my voice, to hear the 

 taunt come back &quot; sell, sell.&quot; But even that 

 monitory sibyl did not move me. Wrought upon 

 by the Indian incantation, I refused to reflect 

 and only exulted. 



It must be a very white magic that can so 

 whelm a man and make the various trivialities of 

 a day s vagabondage take on such hues and melt 

 so sunningly into illusions. I called her Griselle 

 with an easy zest, as if my mouth were a new 

 beaker, and the word had new bubbles on its 

 brim. It is interesting to watch a young tender 

 ness begin to walk, especially if it has been creep 

 ing around for months in the dark. 



She came and sat down beside me, flushing 

 and radiant, on a buttonball trunk that the light 

 ning had felled during the summer, and the wounds 

 of which had been covered by a Samaritan creeper. 

 She was not a foot away from me. I had felt her 

 fan the warm odorous air, loaded with the burnt 

 incense of the leaves, as she came toward me, and 

 yet I was suddenly conscious of some kind of 

 chasm between us that no words I could think 

 of would bridge. In the first place, these lan 

 guorous episodes have no vocabulary only 

 barks, and yaps, and peeps. I think the Indian 

 summer would have us sit mute and breathe hard. 

 It certainly does its best, when you pass the ves 

 tibule, to inebriate you with strange distillations. 

 I have tasted the calamus across several years. 



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