196 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



substances and become a part of the earth's mold. 

 Possibly they have been a part of it hundreds, aye, 

 thousands of times before ; for who knows what 

 varied forms the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, 

 now locked up in the cells of the leaf, have in 

 the past helped to produce? Of what plant, what 

 animal, what man have they formed a part? But 

 however varied the object, which in by-gone ages 

 they have helped to form, it has in time fallen again 

 to the earth, been disintegrated, and again, by the 

 action of the energy of sunlight, the elements com- 

 posing it have been rebuilt into a new organic body 

 which has aided the onward march of our common 

 mother and fitted her better for the abode of man. 



Thus we see in a falling leaf, as it were, a simili- 

 tude of our own lives, as we, tearing ourselves loose 

 from parents and home after having been nourished 

 to the ripeness of manhood, are borne hither and 

 thither by the blasts and eddyings of fate and of the 

 great society in which we mingle, until at last we, 

 too, find a resting place in the earth and yield back 

 to her the elements which are her own. 



While musing thus over the falling leaf, the Indian 

 summer day, perfect as it was, came to a close. It 

 was, let us hope, the first of many yet to be this au- 

 tumn. For on such days we enjoy the smile of nature 

 tender and beautiful her last before she dons her 

 seeming shroud for winter wear. 



"So we shall find our summer being past, 

 And hoar frost with us for a little breath 

 So fair a country, such a genial air, 

 And shall forget our woes, and unaware 

 Step over the borderland of death." 



