AUTUMN 9 



lehem road. "This is living!" No more 

 books, no more manuscripts, — my own or 

 other people's, — no more errands to the 

 city. How good the air was ! How glori- 

 ous the mountains, unclouded, but hazy ! 

 How fragrant the ripening herbage in the 

 shelter of the woods ! — an odor caught for 

 an instant, and then gone again ; something 

 that came of itself, not to be detected, much 

 less traced to its source, by any effort or 

 waiting. The forests were still green, — I 

 had to look closely to find here and there 

 the first touch of red or yellow ; but the 

 flowering season was mostly over, a few 

 ragged asters and goldenrods being the chief 

 brighteners of the wayside. About the sun- 

 nier patches of them, about the asters espe- 

 cially, insects were hovering, still drinking 

 honey before it should be too late : yellow 

 butterflies, bumble-bees (of some northern 

 kind, apparently, marked with orange, and 

 not so large as our common Massachusetts 

 fellow), with swarms of smaller creatures of 

 many sorts. If I stopped to attend to it, 

 each aster bunch was a world by itself. And 

 more than once I did stop. There was no 



