OCTOBER 



Grinnell, October 11, 1884. 



October is supposed to be an especially beauti- 

 ful month in this region, but it is sometimes disap- 

 pointing. A private record for last year shows 

 only about ten days of fine weather, a good many 

 rainy days, and more or less haze, mist, fog, sleet, 

 and snow. In 1880, the sixteenth was as ^^cold as 

 winter," but from the eighteenth to the twenty- 

 first we had clear, crisp weather, nearly ideal for 

 the season. 



Today some of us followed the course of a little 

 stream from the edge of town, southwestward, to 

 the Sugar Creek woods. The boys of the town 

 are familiar with Sugar Creek, Big Bear Creek, 

 Little Bear Creek, and some of them with Rock 

 Creek, and many a nameless ^^ slough"; but we 

 have nothing in the neighborhood that we call a 

 brook. The dictionaries do not seem to define 

 these terms for small streams according to our 

 local usage. Here we think of a ^' brook" as be- 

 longing to a more hilly region than ours, with a 

 rapid current, tumbling over boulders or winding 

 about rocky precipices — a type of ^vater^vay 



(To) 



