ON DIAMOND CREEK 165 
pine round which we gathered with tingling fingers 
and glowing faces, the yellow and crimson leaves, 
dropping one by one, the little searching wind that 
came and whispered secrets of the northern caves 
from which it sprang—everything seemed new, and 
fresh, and wonderful. 
Yet there was too, when I think of it, a shade of 
something like sadness through it all, a vague, un- 
easy longing for similar days long past gone to re- 
turn no more, a something dimly reminiscent in our 
emotions, in the smell of burning wood, in the sense 
of shortening days, in flaming sunsets or the sharp, 
clarion call of a cold dawn. There came over one a 
melancholy at times, that strange nostalgia of the 
spirit which for want of clear cause we assign al- 
ways to something concrete and tangible that we 
have known or loved. 
My thoughts were wont at this time to wander 
forlornly to scenes wherein turkey and mince pie 
were prominent, where chestnuts and popcorn and 
great, cheery, open fires and smiling, kindly faces 
appeared—scenes and faces once seen so often in 
other times, and now so very well, so very clearly 
remembered after the intervening flurry of years! 
Our runs in the Diamond Creek country were 
ideal. An initial climb of six or seven hundred feet 
from the base line in the canyon—a climb to rouse 
the heart and warm one’s blood—and we found our- 
selves on wide, level, flower-studded mesas, beauti- 
ful in the bright sunshine as plains of asphodel. 
