i/6 THE FALLING LEAF. [CHAP. 



their leafy wealth, we begrudge her even this slight 

 return from the gifts she has bestowed so lavishly 

 upon us, forgetting that we shall get them all back 

 again a hundred-fold. For they but go back to her 

 laboratory to be re-manufactured into leaf-bud and 

 blossom, twig and branch again. 



Here they come, racing and dancing, and flying on 

 the wings of the wind. Oh, what a rustle ! strewing 

 the paths and fields and lanes with their dead bodies. 

 Dead ? 



" And shall we say those leaves are dead, 



When naught in Nature ever dies ? 

 What though the plant its bloom has shed, 



It comes again in qther guise ! 

 Last autumn's leaves, though buried low, 



Next spring will rise as leaf and flower, 

 Though earth absorb the winter snow 



'Twill come again as summer shower." 



Surely not dead, for their mission is not completed. 

 And what, pray, is their mission ? They are servants 

 of Madam Nature, who is the Lady Bountiful. In 

 her laboratory, which is the earth, she has a won- 

 derful mill which we heard much of when we were 

 children the mill which grinds old things into new. 

 All the beautiful gifts she bestows on man after a 

 while get shabby and the worse for wear, and then 

 man throws them from him and tramples them under 

 foot. Even these beautiful leaves which we call dead 

 we shall soon get tired of, and vote them a nuisance. 

 We shall sweep them up into a corner, and the wind, 

 again distributing them, we shall tread on them as 

 though they had never ministered to our pleasure. 

 But Nature will be on the look-out, and will set some 



