AUTUMN. IOI 



and such brilliant, polished leaves ! how they glitter in the sun ! almost 

 as though wet with dew. 



And to think how those prickly canes, denuded of their leaves, are 

 sold upon our city thoroughfares as " Spanish rose-trees " to the unsus- 

 pecting passer-by ! Those guileless venders, too ! I remember one that 

 sought to enrich my store of botanical knowledge by telling me they 

 " bloomed in winter !" and had a flower as " big as a saucer," and " kinder 

 like a holy hawk ! ! ! ?" I looked him straight in the eye, but he was the 

 picture of innocence. " Can you tell me the botanical name," I asked. 

 " Oh yes," he glibly replied, " I think they call it the Rubus eftisfaxis." 

 Eheu ! but this was too much, and he saw it, and with a wink of his foxy 

 eye and a shrewd grin, he whispered along the palm of his hand, " Got to 

 git a livin' somehow, boss ; now dont give me away." " Here you are, lady, 

 Spanish roses, lady, fresh from the steamer." I never see a thicket of 

 green-brier without thinking of its " winter blossom ;" and, by-the-way, did 

 you ever notice a thicket of this shrub, what a defiant, arbitrary tyrant it 

 is — shutting out the very life-breath and light of day from its encumbered 

 victims, monopolizing everything within its power, and even reaching out 

 for more with searching tips in mid-air, and a couple of greedy tendrils at 

 every leaf ? And did you ever notice along the road that delicious whiff 

 that comes to you every now and then, that pungent breath of the sweet- 

 fern ? We get it now; the air is laden with it from the dark-green beds 

 across the road. The sweet -fern, as I remember it, was the simpler s 

 panacea and the small boy's joy — an aromatic shrub, whose inhaled 

 fumes, together with its corn-silk rival, seem destined by an all-wise Provi- 

 dence as a preparatory tonic to the more ambitious fumigation of after- 

 years. Many a time have I sat upon this bank and tried to imagine in 

 my domestic product the racy flavor of the famed Havana ! 



Between old Aunt Huldy, with her mania for the simples, and the 

 demand of the village boys, I wonder there is any of it left. But Aunt 

 Huldy has long since died; all her " yarbs," and " yarrer tea," and " paow- 

 erful gud stimmilants " could not give her the lease of eternal earthly 

 life which she said lurked in the " everlastin' flaowers ;" and after she had 

 reached the age of one hundred and three, her tansy decoctions and bone- 

 set potions ceased in their efficacy — the feeble pulse grew feebler, and one 

 winter's eve, sitting in her rocker by her kettle and andirons, she fell into 

 a deep sleep, from which she never awoke. Aunt Huldy was as strange 

 and eccentric a character as one rarely meets in the walks of life. Some 



