Getting Ready for Winter 



with the fierce storms and deadly cold of 

 winter bravely, yet soberly. She sets dili- 

 gently about making her preparations, yet 

 the face she bends over her task is anxious 

 and clouded. The least imaginative and 

 least sensitive person can not fail to detect 

 the sadness of the November atmosphere. 

 It is as plain as the expression of any human 

 face. You may see it stamped upon the 

 skies, and the trees, and the waters, and the 

 dun stretches of withered pasture. You 

 may feel it in the glooming hush of the air, 

 these short, overcast days, or hear it in the 

 moan of tree-tossing winds, or the sobbing 

 of cold rains in the night. No, it is not 

 man's mood that nature reflects in the twi- 

 light months of the year ; for man is not so 

 depressed ; he has no such strenuous strug- 

 gle to make with winter cold, science and 

 art having come to his assistance, in ad- 

 dition to all the resources of nature with 

 which he started out. But dear old Mother 

 Earth must still fight her environment with 

 savage and primitive desperation. No won- 

 der she is depressed, as she sits patching her 

 familiar suit of armor once more. It is her 

 mood that man reflects when he goes abroad 

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