Pie is not the only thing one brings in with his winter 

 squashes. He stores the ripe September in their 

 wrinkled rinds, rinds that are ridged and bossy with 

 the summer's gold. 



To dig one's own potatoes ! to shock one's own 

 corn ! to pick one's own apples ! to pile one's own 

 squashes at one's own barn ! It is like filling one's 

 system with an antitoxin before going into a fever- 

 plagued country. One is immune to winter after this, 

 provided he stays to bake his apples in his own wood 

 fire. One works himself into a glow with all this 

 digging, and picking, and piling that lasts until 

 warm weather comes again ; and along with this har- 

 vest glow comes stealing over him the after-harvest 

 peace. It is the serenity of Indian summer, the mood 

 of the after-harvest season, upon him, upon him 

 and his fields and woods. 



The stores are all in : the acorns have ripened and 

 lie hidden where the squirrels will forget some of 

 them, but where none of the forgotten will forget to 

 grow ; the winged seeds of the asters have drifted 

 down the highways, over .the hillsides and meadows; 

 the birds are gone; the muskrats' lodge is all but 

 finished ; the hickories and the leaf-hid hepaticas are 



38 



