AUTUMNAL SCENERY. 285 



men ' laud it ; so that were spring-time human, and posses- 

 sing human instincts, and subject to human frailties, it would 

 have plenty of excuse, for becoming a very vain personage. 



" Somebody has called the autumnal days the ' saddest of 

 the year.' I have forgotten who he was, if I ever knew ; 

 but in my judgment, he was all wrong. Dark days there 

 are damp, chilly, misty, wet, and unpleasant days in 

 autumn ; days that make one relish a corner by an old- 

 fashioned fire. There are gusty, windy, capricious days in 

 autumn, which nobody cares to praise, when the northwest 

 wind goes sweeping over the forest, roaring among the trees, 

 and whirling the sere leaves along the ground, and which, 

 to tell the truth about them, are anything but pleasant. 

 But ' some days must be dark and dreary,' and they serve to 

 give the sunlight of a bright to-morrow a keener relish, and 

 a lovelier comparative beauty. To call the fall days the 

 ' saddest of the year ' is an absurdity, poetical I admit, but 

 still an absurdity. There is nothing sad in a cold, or a 

 wet, a drizzly, a gusty, or a stormy day ; much there may be 

 that is unpleasant, much that one may be disposed to quar- 

 rel with, but they are anything but sad. 



A calm autumnal day in the country is a great thing, a 

 beautiful thing, a thing to thank God for ; a thing to make 

 one happy, buoyant of spirit, full of gratitude to the great 

 Creator ; a thing to make one merry, too, not with a loud 

 and boisterous mirth, but with a heart full to overflowing 

 with cheerfulness, and a calm joy. To see the bright sun 

 standing in his glory up in the sky, shedding his placid light 



