AT WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE 27 



will with the world about Country Brook. Out 

 of the birches the fresh wind threshed here and 

 there yellow leaves that fluttered like colias but- 

 terflies before it. There and here among the 

 sumacs hung a crimson leaf, more vivid in its 

 color than the blossoms or the berries could ever 

 be, and as in the woodland all news flashes from 

 shrub to shrub and from creature to creature, 

 so it seemed as in the hint of autumn, first born, a 

 simulacrum merely, in the wet sumac heads, had 

 gone by. birch leaf messengers to all distances. 

 Along the way flashed out of invisibility the yellow 

 of tall goldenrod heads and the blue and white 

 of the earliest asters and, once materialized, 

 remained. 



August may bring vivid heat and wilting hu- 

 midity if it will. The witches' twilight had 

 brought down the Merrimac from the far north 

 the flavor of autumn which is later to follow in 

 full force, nor will it wholly leave us again. The 

 ghostliest thing about Country Brook was a sound 

 which seemed to come up it from the cool depths 

 of the woods into which it flows, a soft breathing- 

 sigh, now regular, now intermittent, as if a spirit 



