AUTUMN TIDES. 119 



some way be associated with the Indian. It is red 

 and yellow and dusky like him. The smoke of his 

 camp-fire seems again in the air. The memory of 

 him pervades the woods. His plumes and moccasins 

 and blanket of skins form just the costume the seaso/i 

 demands. It was doubtless his chosen period. The 

 gods smiled upon him then if ever. The time of the 

 chase, the season of the buck and the doe, and of the 

 ripening of all forest fruits ; the time when all men 

 are incipient hunters, when the first frosts have given 

 pungency to the air, when to be abroad on the hills 

 or in the woods is a delight that both old and young 

 feel, if the red aborigine ever had his summer of 

 fullness and contentment, it must have been at this 

 season, and it fitly bears his name. 



In how many respects fall imitates or parodies the 

 spring ; it is indeed, in some of its features, a sort of 

 second youth of the year. Things emerge and be- 

 come conspicuous again. The trees attract all eyes 

 as in May. The birds come forth from their summer 

 privacy and parody their spring reunions and rival- 

 ries ; some of them sing a little after a silence of 

 months. The robins, bluebirds, meadow-larks, spar- 

 rows, crows all sport, and call, and behave in a 

 manner suggestive of spring. The cock grouse 

 drums in the woods as he did in April and May. 

 The pigeons reappear, and the wild geese and ducks. 

 The witch-hazel blooms. The trout spawns. The 

 streams are again full. The air is humid, and the 

 moisture rises in the ground. Nature is breaking 

 camp, as in spring she was going into camp. The 



