276 EFFECT OF AN EARLY FROST. 
more influenced than those of a drier nature ; but it 
served at the time to indicate the portion of moisture 
that was escaping from a given horizontal surface. 
From the invisible and insensible nature of evaporation, 
its influences are not always considered ; but such an 
action on the surfaces of things as that related above, 
must put into operation all the inherent powers of mat- 
ter susceptible of impulse, and probably would produce 
effects which we might suppose to be accomplished by 
the agency of other means. 
Nov. 10. — Many effusions of the mind have been 
produced by the approach or existence of the seasons 
of our year, which seem naturally to actuate our bodily 
or mental feelings through the agency of the eye, or 
temperature of the air. The peculiar silence that pre- 
vails in autumn, like the repose of wearied nature, 
seems to mark the decline and termination of being in 
many things that animated our summer months ; the 
singing of the bird is rare, feeble, and melancholy ; the 
hum of the insect is not heard; the breeze passes by 
us like a sigh from nature : we hear it, and it is gone for 
ever. But it is the vegetable tribes, which at this sea- 
son most particularly influence our feeling, and excite 
our attention. We see the fruits of the earth stored up 
for our use in that dull season “ in which there will be 
neither earing nor harvest,” the termination and reward 
of the labors of man. But this day, November 10, 
presented such a scene of life and mortality, that it 
could not be passed by without viewing it as an admo- 
nition, a display of what has been, and is. There had 
occurred during the night a severe white frost; and, 
standing by a green-house filled with verdure, fragrance, 
and blossom, I was surrounded in every direction by the 
parents of all this gaiety, in blackness, dissolution, and 
decay. But the very day before, they had attracted the 
most merited admiration and delight by the splendor of 
their bloom and the vigor of their growth; but now 
just touched by the icy Anger of the night, they had 
become a mass of unsightly ruins and confusion. Once 
the gay belles of the parterre, they fluttered their hour, 
a generation of existent loveliness ; their youthful sue- 
