1865-68 WAYSIDE GATHERINGS 177 



brought for the occasion. And now that I am 

 here launched into my course with this unpro- 

 mising cargo, it strikes me — and I am encouraged 

 by the thought — that it will be an advantage to 

 younger members of a local association for the 

 mind's improvement to see how independent 

 they may be of rare, strange, or exotic products of 

 Nature for subjects of thought and means of expand- 

 ing their knowledge of her laws and operations. 



' I proceed, therefore, to empty my bag of the 

 specimens I put into it that lay nearest at hand 

 when I left home on my present mission. They 

 are, in fact, such common objects as lie about my 

 dwelling, or may be picked up on the roadside 

 along which I pass daily in Richmond Park to my 

 work in London. 



' First I set before you these handfuls of dead 

 leaves. These withered glories of the summer, 

 their fall in the sere and yellow state of autumn, 

 are symbolic. There are vivid and noisy plea- 

 sures ; there are those also of the quiet kind, 

 and not the less pleasing, even perhaps more 

 cherished in memory, when tinctured with some 

 sadness : and in such a mood have I watched, on 

 a still, calm day in latter autumn, when no breath 

 of wind was stirring, the leaves settling straight 

 down in silent tremulous fall, " one after one," 

 suggesting and recalling the friends and loved 

 ones that had successively and peacefully passed 

 away out of my life. . . .' 



VOL. II. N 



