NOVEMBER 



THE fogs of November are charged to its 

 account with sufficient particularity, but it 

 seldom obtains recognition for days of rare 

 beauty, which, being reminiscent of a more genial 

 time, are set to the general credit of autumn, of 

 whose departed glory they are, as it were, the lingering 

 afterglow. The sensuous flood of summer life ebbs 

 low in creeping sap and songless tree ; the gorgeous 

 opulence of autumn has been drawn aside like a rich 

 curtain, disclosing a more intimate beauty, less 

 pictorial, more statuesque. 



Let any one who will, on such a day, stand where 

 beech or birch grove or but a single tree, for that 

 matter limns the delicate tracery of its leafless 

 branches on the background of the early evening 

 sky no flamboyant surf of reds and purples, but a 

 sea of rest, if such there might be, lying without the 

 confines of this world ; a pale green splendour edged 

 with a strand of evanescent gold he will not sigh 

 that leaves should fall to lay bare such a witchery of 

 form, nor wish to add one touch of colour to the 

 chastened beauty of the scene. Or, look along the 



