DAYS NEAR THANKSGIVING 
2T1 
help themselves. We must be more than careful 
that they are covered over and kept warm and 
snug. 
The trees of the coppice now appear to me as 
dead as the garden, although they also are merely 
resting. Iheir leaves have fallen aimlessly in 
many places, and we see again their frameworks as 
distinctly as in early spring. Yet with this differ- 
ence : in spring, even during raw and chilly weather, 
there shone upon the twigs and branches of the 
trees a glimmer of life, a slight hint of colour. 
Now they appear to grow more sombre every day. 
Grey and dull brown have taken the places of pink 
and yellow. The few stray leaves that still cling 
to the branches look as if only waiting their turn to 
fly off with the next passing wind. 
At the point of the triangle, too, all is dead, but 
there is still a fluffy look from the tall grasses and 
straggly sticks that have not died down to the 
ground. It presents a contrast to the extreme neat- 
ness of the flower beds. Nothing has been covered 
over except the Spanish and the English iris bulbs, 
and even the roughness of this litter gives here an 
appearance of life. 
“Do not tidy up things at the moist point,” I said 
to Joseph, “until it has the still, dead look of the 
rest of the garden.” 
Again he corrected me and said that the garden 
was only sleeping. 
Since the leaves have fallen, we see clearly many 
