and here, in the yellow autumn sun, straggles 

 this witch-hazel, naked like the willows and 

 alders, but spangled thick with yellow blossoms ! 

 Blossoms, indeed, but not flowers. Hydras they 

 look like, from the dying lily-pads, crawling over 

 the bush to yellow and die with the rest of the 

 dying world. 



No natural, well-ordered plant ought to be in 

 flower when its leaves are falling ; but if stumps 

 and dead trees are to blossom, of course leaf-fall- 

 ing time would seem a proper enough season. 

 And what can we call it but blossoming, when an 

 old oak-stump, dead and rotten these ten years, 

 wakes up after a soaking rain, some October 

 morning, a very mound of delicate, glistening, 

 brick-red mushrooms! It is as great a wonder 

 and quite as beautiful a mystery as the bursting 

 into flower of the marsh-marigolds in May. But 

 no deeper mystery, for "dead," did I call 

 these stumps? Rotten they may be, but not 

 dead. There is nothing dead out of doors. 

 There is change and decay in all things j but if 

 birds and bugs, if mosses and mushrooms, can 

 give life, then the deadest tree in the woods is 

 the very fullest of life. 



[245] 



