] I AUTUMN STUDIES 



hedged in between dense green walls. Aspen, 

 shadbush, blackberry, birch and hickory all incline 

 to yellow, mottled and speckled more or less with 

 brown. Ochre, umber, sienna, gamboge are on 

 Nature's palette; soon she will replace these with 

 crimson and scarlet. Already there is a touch of 

 vermilion in the brilliant poison-ivy; and she has 

 spilled drops of scarlet everywhere on the out- 

 skirts of the woods, along a wall, over a fence, up 

 in a pine, in the very midst of a radiant gleaming 

 hickory wherever the Virginia creeper grows. 

 Nature works deftly, at first with delicate brush 

 touching a shadbush, a clump of osmunda, or 

 again only a leaf, a spot of color, a patch here 

 and a streak there; but the day of transfiguration 

 approaches. Early O6tober sees the stag-horn 

 sumacs fairly scintillate with color. At last the 

 whole color-box is upset and runs red down a 

 hillside huckleberry patch, meeting a yellow streak 

 in a ravine and spreading out over the swamps, 

 a sea of scarlet and gold. Every year Nature starts 

 out in this modest fashion and ends in an upset 

 and riot of color. We should know her ways by 

 this time, but though her plan is the same she varies 

 the details infinitely and there are always surprises. 



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