368 
RURAL HOURS. 
for the foliage seems to fall in fuller showers in such spots. The 
beech-trees are dotted with nuts. The wych-hazel has opened its 
husks, and the yellow flowers are dropping with the ripe nuts 
from the branches. Acorns and chestnuts are ^plentifully scat- 
tered beneath the trees which bore them. How much fruit of this 
sort, the natural fruit of the earth — nuts and berries — is wasted 
every year ; or, rather, how bountiful is the supply provided for 
the living creatures who need such food ! 
Friday, 3d. — Very pleasant morning ; the sun shining with a 
mild glow, and a warm air from the south playing over the fad- 
ing valley. Long walk to a neighboring hamlet. 
The fanners are busy with their later autumn tasks, closing the 
work of the present year ; while, at the same time, they are al- 
ready looking forward to another summer. There is something 
pleasing in these mingled labors beneath the waning sun of 
November. It is autumn grown old, and lingering in the field 
with a kindly smile, while they are making ready for the young 
spring to come. Here a farmer was patching up barns and sheds 
to shield his flocks and stores against the winter storms. There 
ploughmen were guiding their teams over a broad field, turning up 
the sod for fresh seed, while other laborers were putting up new 
fences about a meadow which must lie for months beneath the 
snow, ere the young grass will need to be protected in its growth. 
Several wagons passed us loaded with pumpkins, and apples, and 
potatoes, the last crops of the farm on the way from one granary 
to another. Thus the good man, in the late autumn of life, gathers 
cheerfully the gifts which Providence bestows for that day, de- 
spising no fruit of the season ; how^ever simple or homely, he re- 
