NATURE'S REALM. 53 
ant season of youth and beauty and luxuriant 
strength, of warmth, color, fragrance and 
bright promise of a rich harvest later on. 
Autumn is the period of maturity and perfec- 
tion. The flowers are gone but the fruit has 
come. 
the apple blossom have been transformed and 
re-distilled into the color and flavor of the ripe 
fruit. The sweet forces of Nature have ex- 
perded themselves and. the consummation is 
at hand. But the fading leaves of autumn are 
like the gray hairs of age, forerunners of decay 
and death. Soon the earth claims her own 
again, and the soft, white mantle .of winter— 
the winding sheet of the plants and grasses— 
hides the vegetable world from oursight. Yet, 
under this canopy of seeming death, the mys- 
terious processes of a new life are going on. 
Almost before the dead leaves have fallen, the 
new buds—hermetically sealed against the 
cold—are forming for another season of leafage 
and bloom. The yearly miracle is again per- 
formed ; the shrubs and flowers rise from their 
long sleep clothed anew and in fresh garments. 
Who shall say that this transition from appa- 
rent death is not the type and solution of that 
The blushing tints and fragrance of 
higher problem which concerns our own death 
and immortality ! 
He is the richest man who gets the most 
pleasure out of simple and natural things, 
whose love for and knowledge of them has en- 
larged io the uttermost his capacity for enjoy- 
ment. He who goes forth into the fields and 
forests with senses alive to the beauties and 
marvels about him; whose ear is attuned to 
the lisp of the leaves and the sweet, sad song 
of the pines; in whose nostrils the pungent 
scent of sun-seethed ferns and the. divine odor 
of the arbutus act as delighttul restoratives ; 
whose eye is charmed with the silver sheen of 
the poplar, the spot of flame where the wild 
honeysuckle blossoms on the ledge, and the 
lowly dandelion ‘fringing the dusty road with 
harmless gold ;” such a man surely possesses 
an antidote for melancholy and a never-failing 
means of gratifying his highest instincts. 
Others may starve their souls in too strict an 
attention to practical pursuits, or grow lean in 
the search for what the world chooses to call 
pleasure, but 
* He oa honey dew hath fed, 
And drank the milk of Paradise.” 
