1865-68 
WAYSIDE GATHERINGS 
177 
brought for the occasion. And now that I am 
O 
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 
