AUTUMN 5 



and we decline to waste it on theoretical con- 

 siderations. 



Our company, as I say, is divided : car- 

 riage people and pedestrians, we may call 

 them ; or, if you like, drivers and footmen. 

 The walkers are now no more than the 

 others. Formerly — till this present autumn 

 — they were three. Now, alas, one of them 

 walks no longer on earth. The hills that 

 knew him so well know him no more. The 

 asters and goldenrods bloom, hut he comes 

 not to gather them. The maples redden, but 

 he comes not to see them. Yet in a better 

 and truer sense he is with us still ; for we re- 

 member him, and continually talk of him. 

 If we pass a sphagnum bog, we think how 

 at this point he used to turn aside and put 

 a few mosses into his box. Some professor 

 in Germany, or a scholar in New Haven, had 

 asked him to collect additional specimens. 

 In those days of his sphagnum absorption 

 we called him sometimes the " sphagnostic." 



If we come down a certain steep pitch in 

 the road from Garnet Hill, we remind each 

 other that here he always stopped to look for 

 Aster Lindleyanus^ telling us meanwhile 



