AUTUMN 57 



shine, yet veiled perceptibly with haze even 

 at this slight distance. If there is anything 

 in nature more exquisitely, ravisliingly beauti- 

 ful than an old mountainside forest looked at 

 from above, I do not know where to find it. 



Down at the lakeside there is beauty of 

 another kind : the level blue water, the clean 

 gray shallows about its margin, the reflec- 

 tions of bright mountains — Eagle Cliff and 

 Mount Cannon — in its face, and soaring 

 into the sky, on either side and in front, the 

 mountains themselves. And how softly the 

 ground is matted under the shrubbery and 

 trees : twin-flower, partridge berry, creeping 

 snowberry, gold-thread, oxalis, dwarf cornel, 

 checkerberry, trailing arbutus ! The very 

 names ought to be a means of grace to the 

 pen that writes them. 



White-throats and a single winter wren 

 scold at me behind my back as I sit on a 

 spruce log, but for some reason there are 

 few birds here to-day. The fact is excep- 

 tional. As a rule, I have found the bushes 

 populous, and once, I remember, not many 

 days later than this, there were fox sparrows 

 with the rest. I am hoping some tune to 



