NOVEMBER TRAITS 



she delights the blue jays and persistent 

 wild asters by a day of Indian summer. 



There has been a great deal of ill feeling 

 about Indian summer, and the kinder way 

 is not to persecute those who have since 

 youth believed and will maintain forever 

 that it comes in October. Victims of this 

 perverted fancy, they will go through life 

 calling the first hot spell after Labor Day 

 Indian summer. Every fall one explains 

 to them that this brief season of perfection 

 may come as late as Thanksgiving, but 

 the very next year they will be heard to 

 murmur, under frostless skies, "Well, we 

 are having our Indian summer." Let 

 them go their indoors way, or follow the 

 deserting robins down to Paraguay! In- 

 dian summer could just as well come when 

 the oaks have turned forlorn if it wanted 

 to. In truth, it comes and goes, by no 

 means exhausted in a solitary burst of 

 flaring sumacs, fringed gentians lighted by 

 frost along the rims, damson-colored alder 

 leaves and old yellow pumpkins, perilously 

 exposed among forgotten furrows, now that 

 the corn is being drawn in. It goes, and 

 comes again, which is its charm the one 

 time of year that cannot be calendared. 



[61] 



