"Come nearer." Bike riders do not see the country, nor do buggj 

 and horseback riders. Be leisurely and walk. Dally, loiter, poke along, 

 putter, or, if you like not these words get a word you do like, only let 

 the word express delayed and loving motion, the sort of leisureliness a 

 brook knows, running when it feels like running, drowsing when it has 

 a drowsy mood, in silvern basins where sun and shadows meet, shadows 

 to woo to slumber, sun to stoop and kiss the waters awake. So the 

 brook loiters. Do you, friend, when and if you would see an autumn 

 landscape do the like. Choose your word to fit that motion and fit 

 your goings to the word. 



The autumn wind slows to a saunter coming up the long ravine. 

 Purple asters (and I have seldom if ever seen them so royal as this 

 fall) cluster in flocks of loveliness. Black-eyed Susans had in coyness 

 shaded their faces till they looked like buttercups long delayed in 

 blooming, months past due, but keeping faith at last. Now and then 

 morning-glories, with beauty of leaf and tendril and bell-shaped flower, 

 stray and bloom, many of them being so deep a pink as to approach 

 the glow of flame. Iron weed stands on its dignity (as usual) unbend- 

 ing, as people I have known, with its surly purple. Sumacs were dying, 

 but this autumn have the fresh green of spring, so that here is a vivid 

 green good for eyes to look upon. Wild grapes hang in purple bunches, 

 sometimes in the shadow of their own leaves, rare as arabesques, but 

 the grape leaves are turning brown as tired of this long daylight of 

 summer and will soon be quit of it. For days past now they 



"Have been half in love with easeful Death, 

 Caird him soft names in many a mused rhyme."'' 



Oaks have, somo of them, the dull browns of winter save those glossy 

 greens that so well become the:n, fairly flashing in the sun when the 

 wind tosses them into momentary perturbation like play shields used in 

 fairy tournaments. A distance in the background against a hill, sumacs 

 stand in clumps, crimson as flushed sunsets. I am a good lover of the 

 sumac. In the summer its leaves are so glossy and its fronds so beau- 

 tiful, and in late summer its bunches of crimson berries are held on 



high with such loyal pride 

 as if they were a lady's 

 favor to be worn on 

 a knight's helmet, and 

 those berries covered 





