94 PASTORAL DAYS. 



either side the gnarled and knotty branches bend low, and trail their 

 rustling leaves among the tufts of waving grass that fringe the slope 

 around me. 



It is a spot endeared to me from earliest memory, a loved retreat 

 whose every glimpse beneath the overhanging boughs has left its impress, 

 whose every feature of undulating field, of wooded mountain, and winding 

 meadow- brook I have long been able to summon up at will before my 

 closed eyes, as though a mirror of the living picture now before me. 

 And what is this picture ? 



It is an enchanted vision of nature's autumn loveliness — a vision of 

 peace and tranquil resignation that lingers like a poem in the memory. 

 It is a glorious October clay, one of those rarest and loveliest of days 

 when all nature seems transfigured, when a golden, misty veil swings from 

 the heavens in a charmed haze, through which the commonest and most 

 prosaic thing seems spiritualized and glorified. The summer's full frui- 

 tion is past and gone, the dross has been consumed ; and in the lingering 

 life, whose yielding flush now lends its sweet expression to the declining- 

 year, we see the type of perfect trust and hope that finds a fitting emblem 

 in the dim horizon, where heaven and earth are wedded in a golden haze, 

 where purple hills melt softly in the sky. It is a day when one may 

 dream with open eyes, and whose clay-dreams haunt the memory as sweet 

 realities. The sky is filled with rolling, fleecy clouds, whose flat receding 

 bases seem to float upon a transparent amber sea, from whose depths I 

 look through into the blue air beyond. 



Below me an ancient orchard skirts the borders of the knoll. Its 

 boughs are crimson studded, and the ground beneath is streivn with the 

 bright red fruit. They mark the minutes as they fall, running the gaunt- 

 let of the craggy twigs and bounding upon the slope beneath. Beyond 

 the orchard stretch the low, flat meadow lands, set with alders and swamp- 

 maples, with swaying willows, now enclosing, now revealing the graceful 

 curves of the quiet stream as it winds in and out among the overhanging 

 foliage. Soon it is lost beneath a wooded hill, where an old square tower 

 and factory-bell betray the hiding-place of the glassy pond that sends its 

 splashing water-fall across the rocks beneath the old town bridge. Look- 

 ing down upon this bridge, Mount Pisgah, with its rugged cliff, is seen 

 rising bold and stern against the sky, above a brQacl and bright mosaic of 

 elms and maples, spreading from the grove of oaks near by in an un- 

 broken expanse, to the very foot of the precipice, with here and there a 



