136 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



one November fifteenth, "many small insects are 

 ont," and on the corresponding date a few years 

 later, at Eedfield, Sontli Dakota, ''ants and bngs 

 are stirring.'' According to the files of a local 

 newspaper, bugs, flies, and mosquitoes were much 

 in evidence at Grinnell in the verj^ mild December 

 of 1877. 



Yesterday and today have also been "Septem- 

 ber-like. ' ' One often wonders whether the charac- 

 ter of the season is changing, or memory playing 

 us false when we recall the titanic snowdrifts of 

 Thanksgiving time in auld lang syne. Did not 

 Thanksgiving tradition, in families of Yankee or- 

 igin, did not the cover of the Youth's Companion, 

 lead one to expect cold weather, snowy roads, fur- 

 w^'apped human beings for the drive to Thanksgiv- 

 ing dinner at the old home, or at hospitable abodes 

 of uncles, aunts, or cousins! We remember or 

 seem to remember many a Thanksgiving day when 

 the ride northward, six or seven or ten miles, to 

 Uncle Tom's or Uncle Jack's or Uncle William's 

 country home, was decidedly of wintry character 

 — steaming, restive horses, sleigh equipped with 

 heavy robes, hot bricks, and freestones, snow- 

 drifts across the fences, and brief runs behind the 

 sleigh "to keep from freezing." Did the snow 

 really fail with the years or did the boy merely 

 grow up and imagination languish? There was 

 certainly no very heavy snow on that Thanksgiv- 



