Autumn Sights and Musings 195 



earth at the brook sides, spruce boughs 

 bear seeming nests that we find to be 

 heaps of needles dropped from the taller 

 pines, and on all the landscape rests the 

 still air of a finished work. Sleeping-time 

 has come to nature, and the fat, heavy- 

 eyed, tired-headed man from town may 

 share her rest. 



Yet the crickets are still chirring, the red 

 wood salamander is trilling, bees are hum- 

 ming through the asters, and in quiet spots 

 the drone of flies cheats us into thinking 

 that we have been spoken to by soft 

 tongues, or that we have caught a note of 

 talk in a thicket where sweet-voiced girls 

 or gentle children are telling confidences. 

 There is a wonderful human quality in 

 these wood sounds. I suppose everybody 

 has heard the speech of flies' wings. It is 

 nearly as plain as those airy voices that 

 "syllable men's names" in solitude. 



And a great delight in autumn is the 

 wind. Its paean, grand, solemn, yet with 

 an under-note of joy that comes of liberty, 

 is best heard on the edge of a wood, where 

 you can see the wide, waste space that it 



