198 In Touch with Nature. 



the harvest ended, the whole earth rested. It was 

 fitting rather to pause and count our gains and 

 losses than consider some new venture. Aught 

 that savored of real labor was repugnant this cool, 

 gray day. It was with an effort that I roused 

 myself to contemplate a sleeping beauty. There 

 was an unbroken gray sky above ; a mile-wide 

 expanse of gray water before me, and banks of 

 pearly mist shut out all but the nearest trees on 

 the main shore. As to an island opposite, there 

 was that dreamy indistinctness about it that made 

 it possible to fancy all things as one voyaged 

 thither. But an island is but a main shore on a 

 smaller scale, and why hasten towards it? The 

 river is, at least, hospitably inclined to-day, and 

 not so much as hints at buffeting my frail canoe, 

 and in it, if not so swiftly, almost as airily as the 

 swallows, I drift with the tide. 



The swallows to-day are not the aerial creat- 

 ures of early summer. They fly so closely to 

 the water now their wings seem actually to touch 

 it. I see that they snap from the surface such in- 

 sects as have fallen, as well as those spidery imps 

 that run between the ripples. Except these, I can 



