l80 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with some- 

 thing of the hilarity of a wake, rather than 

 the despondency of other funerals. When the 

 wind begins to come out of the northwest of 

 set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low 

 and searching fierceness, very different from the 

 roystering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put 

 the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, 

 pruned the grapevines and laid them under the 

 soil, tied up the tender plants, given the fruit- 

 trees a good, solid meal about the roots ; and 

 so I turn away, writing Resurgam on the gate- 

 post. And Calvin, aware that the summer is 

 past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse 

 in the kitchen is worth two birds gone south, 

 scampers away to the house with his tail in the 

 air. 



And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. 

 I know that this is only a truce until the parties 

 recover their exhausted energies. All wintei 



