IN GOD'S ACRE 



1LIKE to lean over the garden fence and look down 

 the long road losing itself in the violet mists of an 

 autumn afternoon. The whole world becomes a garden 

 in St. Martin's summer, and the idle road lazily taking its 

 course between bending elms and maples bearing the tat- 

 tered banners of red and gold of October foliage leads on 

 and on to dusky tangles where lingering blue gentians still 

 look to heaven with the eyes of faith, and to forests where 

 the woodbine drapes its crimson wreaths, and on and on, 

 no one knows where. The dream escapes us, following 

 the vision ever going on and on. 



What will be our mental state, I wonder, when we 

 have found out all the secrets of nature. Knowing as we 

 do the cantankerous make-up of man and his unreliabil- 

 ity, why should we want to manage the weather, and to 

 discover the secrets of the machinery of the solar system*? 

 My neighbors have prayed for rain, but I do not want it, 

 regarding every fair day of autumn as so much gold in the 

 treasury of esthetic pleasure. Suppose it should rain and 

 rain, from the equinox to the solstice, what a sodden place 

 would be the gallery of recollections for that season, and 

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