OCTOBER 



OCTOBER ran its course with as many 

 changes as ever diversified its vernal 

 counterpart, April, of varying sun and 

 shower. On 'the whole a grey, still month, with 

 low, leaden, rain-full clouds above ; and below, a 

 white mist which hugged the sodden land, where 

 the ponds were full to the lips, and swollen brook 

 and river ran high between their rat-riddled banks. 

 The trees, stripped to the bark, save for the late- 

 born leaf that still clung dangling to each branch's 

 tip, rose from the monotonous mist like those in 

 Segantini's weird piece, " The Unnatural Mothers," 

 so bare, so detached, so alone. The sparely clad 

 hedgerow, through which the light now filtered 

 unobstructed, disclosed the unsuspected nest, whose 

 summer brood had long since flown afield for better 

 or worse, and only returned to feast improvidently 

 upon the clustering haws summer's last largess;; 

 for the white of the misletoe and the red of the 

 holly are but a winter pittance in a frost-bound 

 land. 



Nature's provision for the birds seems strangely 



