THANKSGIVING 



The flowers are gone, but they were 

 not brighter than the winter berries and 

 bittersweet that glow around one. The 

 deciduous leaves are fallen and withered, 

 but they were not more beautiful than 

 the delicate tracery of their forsaken 

 branches, and the steadfast foliage of 

 the evergreens was never brighter. The 

 song-birds are singing in southern woods, 

 but chickadee, nuthatch, and wood- 

 pecker are chatty and companionable 

 and keep the woods in heart with a stir 

 of life. 



Then from overhead or underfoot a 

 ruffed grouse booms away into the gray 

 haze of branches, and one hears the 

 whirr and crash of his headlong flight 

 long after he is lost to sight, perchance 

 long after the echo of a futile shot has 

 died away. Far off one hears the in- 

 termittent discharge of rifles where the 

 shooters are burning powder for their 

 Thanksgiving turkey, and faintly from 

 far away comes the melancholy music of 

 a hound. Then nearer and clearer, then 

 a rustle of velvet-clad feet, and lo, rey- 

 nard himself, the wildest spirit of the 

 woods, materializes out of the russet in- 

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